Meshes of the Afternoon

BFI Film Classics

by John David Rhodes

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), filmed by Maya Deren and her then husband Alexader Hammid in their bungalow above Sunset Boulevard for a mere $274.90, is the most important film in the history of American avant-garde cinema. The artistic collaboration between Deren and Hammid finds its distorted reflection in the vision of the film's tormented female protagonist. Its focus - through a series of intricate and interlocking dream sequences - on female experience and the domestic sphere links Meshes to the Hollywood melodramas of the period, while its unsettling atmosphere of dread, death and doubles makes it a counter-cinematic cousin to film noir. The film has influenced not only the subsequent history of experimental film, but also on the work of Hollywood auteurs. It is a touchstone of women's film-making, of modern cinema and of modern art.

John David Rhodes traces the film's history back into the lives of Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, but in particular that of Deren. He reads the film as a culmination of Deren's abiding interest in modernism and her intense engagement in socialist politics. Rhodes argues that while the film remains a powerful point of reference for feminist film-makers and experimentalists, it is also an example of political art in the broadest terms.

In his foreword to this new edition, Rhodes reflects upon the film's continuing importance for and influence upon feminist and avant-garde filmmaking.

Genres: Film

136 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2011

Reviews

[Morgan M. Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is never going to stop driving me crazy that this film was made for only $274.90

[Travis Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love how emphatically it reminds readers that Deren openly rejected Freudian interpretations of her work. Can't wait to deploy this when somebody does a lazy psychoanalytic reading of what has to be the most complex 14 minutes of all of cinema.

[Joe Nixon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow, this shit was really boring

[Hector Coles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Contains a lot of interesting analysis and information about the time that the film was made (1940s) as well as a great telling of the life of Maya Deren, the director. It brought across well the love between her and Hammid that was put into the making of the film. However, the descriptions of sequences of the film, in incredible detail, and which take up most of the book, do not work. They are boring and confusing and the book should really assume the reader has watched the film and then describe the scene in much less detail. Also, there is an irony in that it spends the whole book analyzing the film and then ends by talking about how Deren rejected all analysis of the film.