1946: Reflections on Cinema after Viewing Maya Deren's Ritual in Transfigured Time

Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946)
Directed by Maya Deren
15 min.; U.S.A.; Black and White; Silent

A few posts back I inquired about what we film bloggers mean when we use the term, "cinematic." As an adjective used to describe everything from motion pictures to music, televisions shows, literature, and video games, the term's ubiquity is easily matched by its connotative ambiguity and flexibility. Happily, a number of knowledgeable bloggers offered some thoughtful responses to the query (my thanks, everybody). However, while these responses offered to reinforce some of my own understanding of "cinematic" none managed to complete my association with the word. I had some definition in mind that I sensed, but found I couldn't readily articulate.

Then I read A.L. Rees' essay "Avant-Garde Film: The Second Wave" and the description of the work of filmmaker Maya Deren in the Oxford History of World Cinema. Rees writes that for Deren film has an objective aspect of realism, but with editing also manipulates both time and space to "create a new language that is film's alone" (539). Now the reluctant definition of "cinematic" finally came forward. I realized that, for me too, "cinematic" implies not only the look and sound, but also both the manipulation of space and time in motion pictures. For, through various styles of editing and tricks of cinematography movies can make leaps through time, cause the fourth dimension to slow down, run backwards, or even suspend for us. That clicked for me. I immediately sought out some of Deren's pictures to see for myself how her work might fit this idea of "cinematic."

Deren novices (like myself) have help getting to know the filmmaker and her work thanks to Martina Kudlacek's fine biographical motion picture, In the Mirror of Maya Deren (2002). Deren was born Eleanora Derenkowski to privilege in 1917 during the Bolshevik revolution in Kiev, Russia. In 1922 her family, like many Jewish families living in Russia at the time, emigrated to the United States. After receiving a degree in English she toured with the Katherine Dunham dance company in Los Angeles in 1942. There she met Alexander Hammid, an experimental filmmaker from Czechoslovakia. The couple married and moved to New York the following year. At her request, Hammid renamed her Maya after a Hindu goddess who holds a veil in front of our eyes that hides the spiritual word from us. At the time Deren was working as a poet but found the need to translate images into verbal form irritating. For her, Hammid's motion picture camera was a welcome solution to this problem. Deren said that for her film was a way to make the world dance as opposed to her dancing for the world. In 1943, Deren made her best known picture, Meshes of the Afternoon. Meshes is an acknowledged masterpiece; Deren was awarded the Grand Prix Internationale for 16 mm experimental film at the Cannes Film Festival for it in 1947. However, since the year currently under study at this blog is 1946 I turned my attention to the surreal Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946), a 16mm black and white picture photographed by Hella Heyman, who, along with Hammid, had captured the littoral dreamscape imagery in Deren's previous offering, At Land (1944).

In Ritual in Transfigured Time, Deren contrasts two women (played by herself and Rita Christiani), their identities and their interpersonal relationships. The pair begin the film connected by a string of yarn. Dancing, they separate and meet dozens of the same people before both focusing on one man. The film concludes when they come together again in the one experience we all share: death. The low-key lighting may reflect some of the (then) current trends in American crime pictures, but the rest of the style is far removed from any Hollywood offering that I've seen from the 1940s. What makes the picture so radically different is that Deren eschews the linear storytelling of the classic Hollywood style in favor of montage, slow motion, and forms of dance. More, the film is a study in duality and the unknown links that bind us. The women are near doppelgängers of each other (reminding me of Céline et Julie vont en bateau (1974) and Mulholland Drive (2001) in particular). Seen another way it is a drama of desire and loss resulting in death rather than the more familiar happy ending. However, the aforementioned editing style, use of slow-motion and reverse action, the lack of dialogue, the lack of music to cue emotional connections, the dancing, and the whispering, scratchy sound of film running past the play head of the projector deprive the causal movie fan of the familiar ways we recognize and follow a picture's story logic. The result can be frustrating (my fellow viewer did not care for it one whit).

Back in 1946 Ritual in Transfigured Time and Deren's other films were shown at various avant-garde film exhibitions in museums, playhouses, and theaters (the one advertised above left was held in 1949), and she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for "Creative Work in the Field of Motion Pictures." French avant garde architect, Le Corbusier was quoted in the press as saying her films offered an "escape from the stupidity of make-believe." But other opinions of her work seem to reflect a frustration with artistic filmmaking. For example, check out the following excerpt from a front page preview of an exhibition of her films in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1947:

The samples of modern "art" which demand (and are given) a thousand lines of carefully written prose to explain the artist's meaning have nothing on three short films to be shown tonight at the Berkshire Museum...People will like the movie tonight for varying reasons, one of which being that it won't take very long--33 minutes. And Maya is interesting to look at. In those 33 minutes she slides down a rock precipice, goes swimming, gets murdered, almost drowns (we thought), and does quite a bit of running and walking. She has big strong legs. Those liking abstruse symbols can wonder why keys come out of her mouth or why flowers (said to be symbolic of fertility) are dropped on a white pillow. When the key comes out of her mouth there is a reasonably absorbing close-up of Miss Deren's lips. ("Silent Movies Will Thrill, Will Chill Museum Members," The Berkshire Eagle (1 August 1947), 1)

Today, if you surf around film websites and blogs you'll find that writers who admire Deren's contribution to cinema attribute the mysterious charm of her work to something called "dream logic" or a dreamlike quality. For me, that quality appears rooted in the filmmaker's unique way of manipulating both space and time on the screen. The "transfigured" time being imaged through the use of montage, rhythmic editing, stop motion, and over-cranked camera. Deren herself expressed the sense of time in her films as being time in motion, each moment becoming the next, not fixed to any immediate Now (to make the interpretation of the title complete the "ritual" refers to the forms of dance that imply relationships between individuals in the film). Grasping this sense of time in transition in cinema makes it easier to enjoy Deren's film--not as a series of images progressing through cause and effect events in a narrative arc, but rather a state of continuous transformation in which anything is possible. Perhaps it's best to allow films to wash over us like a pieces of music and experience them as human beings rather than mine them for logical meaning.

Hmm...I suppose that wouldn't demand opposing or ignoring assumptions I readily make about motion pictures and how we experience them--that they usually exist in narrative frameworks and function in ways that reflect our everyday experience of reality--it just means understanding that they don't necessarily have to exist and function that way. I wonder, if I released all expectations on cinema, and gave up the need to interpret it according to the logic of professionally taught disciplines, would that make experiencing it more fascinating, more enjoyable than it is already?

Perhaps one day I'll reach the point where I can experience cinema that way all the time, but I admit I find the concept slippery and opposed to a lifetime of teaching and learning. I feel like Yoda is standing at my shoulder reminding me to unlearn what I have learned. Maybe the transition, the change in conscious thought, is too difficult. Maybe it's my stubborn Irish streak (as Mom calls it). Or maybe it's really easier than I think, and I'm focusing too directly. Perhaps I've already made the transition yet fail to realize it.

My very sincere thanks to Jennifer MacMillan for the kind help and inspiration.

This post written by Thom Ryan
Copyright 2008 Thom Ryan Some rights reserved

Comments

[jmac]

This is a beautiful post on Maya Deren! She definitely is an inspiration to me, and I am inspired by your writing!

I am very interested in the subtle shifts in consciousness and how these changes affect our ability to understand experimental cinema. I think that the process is different for everyone. Maybe you have made a shift in consciousness or maybe you've just always kind of understood?

By the way, Maya looks like she is dancing at the editing table! When I write at my computer, I feel like this image! :)

[Thom]

Thanks for the thoughtful comments, J. "Dancing at the editing table" would be an ideal title for that image. I feel that the photo suits the text here because Deren's editing style, along with Rees' comments and reading your blog, opened up cinema for me in a way I kind of forgot about since watching Méliès, Porter, Un chien andalou (1929), and L'Age D'Or (1930). I like your idea that the process is different for everyone. We may not always write about cinema, or think about it, this way, but it's reassuring to remember that we can if we allow ourselves to...

[shahn]

A lovely post!
My first experience viewing Maya Deren was at a local all-women film festival. Sitting outdoors on an uncharacteristically warm evening watching the film in a crowd formed predominantly of women was a unique experience similar to the actual film.
With her films, and other avant-garde films, I feel I can enjoy the experience she is sharing with me, I feel more enveloped in the film makers vision. I much prefer that type of film experience than recognizing and appreciating a director's command of classical film elements.
Thanks for posting this.

[AR]

I didn't even think to mention "time" in my response to that question, I suppose because I take that aspect as assumed. When I was in school, I recall film and video and some multimedia were called time-based, but it's still a notion I think about after the sound and vision.

Anyway, I finally saw some Deren on YouTube several months ago. I really love her work, though the lack of sound does frustrate me somewhat.
What was nice though was finally understanding why a professor recommended I see her work many years ago in a critique. I've never done film (wanted to, never had the equipment), but w/my photography I can see the relation.

[Joe Thompson]

Thom: It's good to have you back on your journey through the years. Thanks for the comments on this film and on Maya Deren in general. The only film of hers that I have seen is "Meshes of the Afternoon". You've inspired me to look for more.

Regards,
Joe Thompson ;0)

[Thom]

Shahn, AR, Joe, thank you.

Shahn - Thanks for sharing your memory of the festival here. It reflects the personal connection many seem to make with Deren's films and those of other avant-garde filmmakers.

AR - Anything added to that discussion meant more than anything left out as far as I'm concerned, AR. Btw, the recent book meme has me wondering what is on page 123 of Hans Henry Jahnn's The Night of Lead, featured over at your blog. Oh, and I'm lending my support to your stated desire to make a film. I'd love to see what you'd create with a rented 16mm Bolex.

Joe - And it's good to see you back 'round here too, sir. If/when you see more of Deren's films I hope we'll get to see a post about them at The Pneumatic Rolling-Sphere Carrier Delusion.