Synopsis
A woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality. Through repetitive images and complete mismatching of the objective view of time and space, her dark inner desires play out on-screen.
1943 Directed by Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid
A woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality. Through repetitive images and complete mismatching of the objective view of time and space, her dark inner desires play out on-screen.
Un falso despertar, 오후의 그물망, 오후의 올가미, Полудневі тенета, İkindi Tuzakları, 午后的迷惘, Tramas do Entardecer, Послеполуденные сети, Mreže poslijepodneva
There's a before and after effect with this film where its influence is so vast that everything from Kate Bush albums to Vertigo comic books wouldn't look the same if it didn't exist.
A desperate cry for every woman trapped inside an image, and one of the most important films ever made with regard to internal expression written in formal dream logic.
this is so, so many things but it is also totally thee ur-slasher in which dream and reality overlap and become indistinguishable and a Phantom figure projects from within and/or invades into a woman's home/space/body. the phantom is mirror faced, slipping into a specific man who is also herself, eliding the difference, figuring both as the Woman's pseudo-doubles in a space of destabilized identity that is all parts multiplicity, opacity, reflection, and gender confusion. the immediate Threat to the body inside/outside emerges in the knife, the dread of stalking/being stalked. murder/suicide, escape and imprisonment, in bodies in domesticity. the shadowed mirror figure laying the funerary flower, the woman dead by her own hand, which is the hand of the man,…
It's so strange. I've seen this at least 30 times, and that's a conservative figure. But today in one of my classes, a student asked me whether it was Deren or Hammid who placed the flower on the pavement in the opening shot.
In all this time, I never noticed that it's a mannequin arm. So bizarre.
Films like this never stop giving, do they?
Cormac, love you for this.
My thoughts after my 1st watch:
1. the key is the key.
2. to what?
3. to herself?
4. but who is the man??
My thoughts occurring roughly in order during my 2nd watch:
0. the key is the key.
1. flower, key, knife, telephone. ok lara, but what's the connection between them?
2. she picks up the flower from the ground.
3. she drops the key.
4. the flower isn't the key then?
5. the knife slices into the bread. the bread = the body of christ, life etc. the knife slices into life and kills it. whew.
6. the telephone is unhooked from its base. disconnection? between whom?
7. she sees the mirror…
Maya Deren's multi-faceted film is one that can never be fully understood. The symbolism, representations of reality and fantasy, and the interpretations that follow all try to touch the base of this film, but try as they might, this film is just untouchable. It's an experience more than a film. An atmosphere of mood and imagery tailor made to affect the viewer's psyche. It manipulates us in unknown ways leaving its mystery at the top of the totem pole and as the most coveted prize.
Even though it is futile, it is always interesting to read the interpretations of the film, and I would like to add some of my thoughts as well. Many consider it a feminist film and…
"The major obstacle for amateur filmmakers is their own sense of inferiority vis-a-vis professional productions. The very classification “amateur” has an apologetic ring. But that very word–from the Latin “amateur”–“lover” means one who does something for the love of the thing rather than for economic reasons or necessity. And this is the meaning from which the amateur filmmaker should take his clue. Instead of envying the script and dialogue writers, the trained actors, the elaborate staffs and sets, the enormous production budgets of the professional film, the amateur should make use of the one great advantage which all professionals envy him, namely, freedom–both artistic and physical... You have all this, and a brain too, in one neat, compact, mobile package. Cameras do not make films; filmmakers make films."
- Maya Deren, Film Culture, 1965
86
An elongated, elegant descent into a certain kind of tactility, explored by the wisp of a bellowing curtain, the sudden appearance of a knife, even the surrounding architecture's presence as it rises and falls in tandem with the subject's body. A ghostly figure being revealed - sporting a mirror for a face - in full-view gave me a genuine startle and sent shivers down my spine.