Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) on Netflix
A woman comes home, drops her key, and sleeps in a chair. She dreams of chasing a hooded figure whose face is a mirror, and of meeting herself in the same rooms.
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- Netflix4.5/5
- IMDb7.8/1017,056 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
A woman walking back to her home notices someone on the street. Inside, she falls asleep in a chair. She dreams that a figure in a hood, whose face is a mirror, moves through the house, and she tries to follow it but cannot catch it. Each time a chase fails, she walks back in and comes upon the same things: a key, a flower, a bread knife with its blade in a loaf, a phonograph, a telephone off the hook. She also meets other versions of herself, each one repeating a part of the dream she has already had.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Filmmaker Stan Brakhage, who knew Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, claimed in his book Film at Wit's End that Meshes of the Afternoon was largely Hammid's creation, and that the couple's marriage began to suffer once the film brought Deren more credit.
- The original print of Meshes of the Afternoon had no score; a score influenced by classical Japanese music was added in 1959 by Teiji Ito, Deren's third husband.
- In 2010 the Museum of Modern Art mounted an exhibition on Deren's influence on three experimental filmmakers, Barbara Hammer, Su Friedrich and Carolee Schneemann, as part of a year-long retrospective on the representation of women. Friedrich's 1979 short Cool Hands, Warm Heart was a direct homage that reused the film's flower and knife motifs.
- Kristin Hersh's song "Your Ghost" was inspired by the film, and its music video reuses motifs including a spinning record, a telephone and a key on a woman's tongue; Milla Jovovich's video for "Gentleman Who Fell" reproduces the mirror-faced figure, the key, the knife and the shifting staircase.
- Deren rigged a camera effect into a staircase scene: each time she pushes against the wall, the camera moves in that direction, and the top of the stairs leads her into her bedroom's window, destroying the viewer's normal sense of space.
