Meshes of the Afternoon

BFI Film Classics

by John David Rhodes

John David Rhodes' illuminating study of Maya Deren's mesmerising short 'Meshes of the Afternoon' (1943) places the film in the context of European modernism and as a pivotal text for the pre- and post-War history of the cinematic avant garde. Rhodes also explores the film's use of point of view, repetition and visual symobolism.

Genres: Film

128 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.