Editing Meshes of the Afternoon (section)

==Analysis==
In the early 1970s, [[J. Hoberman]] claimed that ''Meshes of the Afternoon'' was "less related to European surrealism" and more related to "Hollywood wartime ''[[film noir]]''".<ref name=village>{{cite book |last1=Hoberman |first1=J. |title=The Village Voice Film Guide: 50 Years of Movies from Classics to Cult Hits |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yHcIp0sa6MkC&pg=PA171 |publisher=[[Wiley & Sons]] |location=Hoboken, NJ |date=2007 |page=171 |isbn=9780471787815 |access-date=9 January 2016}}</ref>

Deren explained that ''Meshes'' "...is concerned with the interior experiences of an individual. It does not record an event which could be witnessed by other persons. Rather, it reproduces the way in which the subconscious of an individual will develop, interpret and elaborate an apparently simple and casual incident into a critical emotional experience."<ref name=dvd>{{cite AV media |people=Deren, Maya (director) |title=Maya Deren: experimental films |medium=DVD |location=New York |date=2002 |publisher=Mystic Fire Video}}</ref>

===Lewis Jacobs's discussion===
<!-- This section has been ported from the Maya Deren biography page as it is more appropriate to the article on the film itself. -->

{{Original research|section|date=December 2022}}

Writing about ''Meshes of the Afternoon'', Lewis Jacobs credits Maya Deren with being the first film maker since the end of [[World War II]] to "inject a fresh note into experimental film production".<ref name=Jacobs>{{cite journal |last1=Jacobs |first1=Lewis |title=Experimental Cinema in America (Part Two: The Postwar Revival) |journal=Hollywood Quarterly |date=Spring 1948 |volume=3 |issue=3 |pages=278–292 |doi=10.2307/1209699 |jstor=1209699}}</ref>

Further in his discussion of experimental cinema in postwar America, Jacobs says the film "attempted to show the way in which an apparently simple and casual occurrence develops subconsciously into a critical and emotional experience. A girl comes home one afternoon and falls asleep. In a dream she sees herself returning home, tortured by loneliness and frustration and impulsively committing suicide. The story has a double climax, in which it appears that the imagined, the dream, has become real.”<ref name=Jacobs />

Deren uses specific cinematic devices in this film to convey deeper meaning. In a particular scene, Deren is walking up a normal set of stairs, and each time she pushes against the wall, it triggers the camera to move in that direction, almost as if the camera is part of her body. As she pulls herself up the last stair, the top of the stairs leads her to a window in her bedroom, which breaks the expectations of the viewer. In doing so, Deren destroys the normal sense of time and space. There is no longer a sense of what space she is in, nor for how long it was there. Deren constantly asks the viewer to pay attention and remember certain things by repeating the same actions over and over with only very subtle changes.

A recognizable trait of Deren's work is her use of the subjective and objective camera. For instance, shots in ''Meshes of the Afternoon'' cut from Deren looking at an object, to Deren's point of view, looking at herself perform the same actions that she has been making throughout the film. This conveys the meaning of Deren's dual personality or ambivalent feelings towards the possibility of suicide. It is Lewis Jacobs's opinion that "the film is not completely successful, it skips from objectivity to subjectivity without transitions or preparation and is often confusing."<ref name=Jacobs /> An example of Jacobs's comment would be when Deren cuts to her point of view, which normally is an objective shot, but in this POV shot she is watching herself, which is subjective. The viewer cannot expect Deren's POV shot to contain herself.

===Joseph Brinton's discussion===
<!-- This section has been ported from the Maya Deren biography page as it is more appropriate to the article on the film itself. -->

In Joseph Brinton's 1947 essay "Subjective Camera or Subjective Audience", he states that "the symbolic picturization of man’s subconscious in Maya Deren’s experimental films suggests that the subjective camera can explore subtleties hitherto unimaginable as film content. As the new technique can clearly express almost any facet of everyday human experience, its development should presage a new type of psychological film in which the camera will reveal the human mind, not superficially, but honestly in terms of image and sound."<ref name=Brinton>{{cite journal |last1=Brinton, III |first1=Joseph P. |title=Subjective Camera or Subjective Audience? |journal=Hollywood Quarterly |date=July 1947 |volume=2 |issue=4 |pages=365 |doi=10.2307/1209531 |jstor=1209531}}</ref>

Jacobs' critique that "the film is not completely successful, it skips from objectivity to subjectivity without transitions or preparation and is often confusing", represents one point of view. However, others take the film's approach to be a direct representation on the character's thought patterns in a time of crisis: "Such a film should indeed endow the cinema with a wholly new dimension of subjective experience, permitting the audience to see a human being both as others see him and as he sees himself."<ref name=Brinton />

===Museum of Modern Art===
In the [[Museum of Modern Art]] retrospective (2010), it was suggested that the pieces of the mirror falling into the ocean waves set up ''[[At Land]]'' (1944) as a direct sequel, while Deren's last scene in the latter film (running with her hands up with a chess piece in one of them) is then echoed by a scene in ''[[Ritual in Transfigured Time]]'' (1946) with that character still running.