NFR Project: 'Meshes of the Afternoon' (1943)

 

NFR Project: “Meshes of the Afternoon”

Dir: Maya Deren, Alexandr Hackenschmied

Scr: Maya Deren

Pho: Alexandr Hackenschmied

Ed: Maya Deren

Premiere: 1943

14 min.

There is a long alternate, dimly seen history of film – a hidden history of the avant-garde. Coming from Stan Brakhage’s old stomping grounds, I have sought out and been exposed to more of it than most. Still, I was unfamiliar with this proclaimed “classic” of American avant-garde cinema.

It’s a beautiful example of the subjective purposing of camera language, combined with a desire to impart a rhyming set of images that fix in the mind with forbidding clarity. It’s a poem, not a story, as such completely subverting the narrative drive that underlies all mainstream movies. Meshes is compelling to watch, but you don’t know why; it reaches something in your subconscious. Film in America had rarely staged dream and vision so effectively, with such economy of means.

Wife and husband Maya Deren, originally Eleonora Derenkovskaya, and Alexandr Hackenschmied, later Alexander Hammid, both emigres, created this film in their own (ironically, Hollywood) home; it is shot silently with a dreamy feel. A woman wanders through a house. She encounters a flower, a key, a knife, a telephone. The camera switches from subjective to (supposedly) objective without warning.

The woman pursues a garbed figure with a mirror for a face, also holding a flower – but breaks off, over and again. The woman sleeps, she dreams: she splits into multiples. The beautiful Deren, expressionless like a medieval Madonna, sees, and is observed. With mirrored balls for eyes, she stalks herself with a knife, striding now on the beach, then in a furrow, then in the grass, then onto a city sidewalk. This explosion is followed by the vision of a man seeing to woo her. The screen bursts open. Deren repeats actions, gestures, symbols, gestures, varying them slightly each time.

She ends up dead. Or is that a dream? What the hell is going on? The viewer has to supply their own answers as a set of confusing images are thrown at them.

The film resembles the early work of Cocteau, Man Ray, Leger, and others – but Deren, who asserted that hers was the lion’s share of the creative effort, denied having seen them. She creates her own unique filmed poetry, and it’s assured, and watchable. It inspires confusion and stimulates thought. At the same time.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Ox-Bow Incident.

 

 

NFR Project: 'Lassie Come Home' (1943)

 

NFR Project: “Lassie Come Home”

Dir: Fred M. Wilcox

Scr: Hugo Butler

Pho: Leonard Smith

Ed: Ben Lewis

Premiere: Oct. 7, 1943

89 min.

Do you love dogs? I do. Growing up, the character of Lassie the collie was familiar to all of us due to several different TV shows that featured this canine hero.

It all started with this film, adapted from Eric Knight’s 1940 novel. In Yorkshire, an impoverished family is forced to sell their beloved dog Lassie to a Duke who raises dogs for sport and exhibition.

The problem is, Lassie loves her family and refuses to leave them. Several times she escapes, until she is transported all the way to Scotland. There she escapes again, and makes her laborious way on foot over hundreds of miles, encountering both hardships and kindness on her way.

The film features Roddy McDowall as her young master Joe, and Donald Crisp and Elsa Lancaster as his parents. The Duke is portrayed by the huffing and puffing Nigel Bruce, and his little granddaughter is played by Elizabeth Taylor. Along the way, Lassie interacts with solid character actors such as Dame Mae Whitty, Edmund Gwenn, Alan Napier, and Arthur Shields.

The film is simple and moving. We all want Lassie to come home! The intrepid Pal, a male collie who played Lassie, is intelligent and emotive, more so than many a human actor. The epic journey Lassie undergoes makes her a true champion, faithful and shall we say dogged? in her pursuit of home. This is a fun and exciting family classic that everyone in their right mind should love.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Meshes of the Afternoon.

NFR Project: George Stevens' World War II footage (1943-1945)

 

NFR Project: George Stevens’ World War II footage

103 min.

George Stevens’ work is already well-represented in the National Film Registry. He started out making comedies, shooting them for Hal Roach. He was the Director of Photography for the Laural and Hardy’s Battle of the Century (1927) and Big Business (1929), as well as Max Davidson’s Pass the Gravy (1928).

He showed his versality by directing such disparate pictures as Swing Time (1936), Gunga Din (1939), and Woman of the Year (1942). When World War II broke out, Stevens enlisted in the Signal Corps, where he was appointed Major. General Eisenhower issued him orders -- it was his mission to assemble a team that would document the war in Europe. A motley crew dubbed “Stevens’ Irregulars” followed closely behind the men in the front lines, shooting a visual history of the war in a way never before achieved. It is a brutal indictment of those who provoked the destruction, death, and anguish that war imposes on the world.

The Special Coverage Unit group assembled 304 minutes of color footage, and 54 minutes of silent black-and-white footage. Stevens shot his own color home-movie 16-millimeter film as well. (You can find much of the footage here.) The intrepid gang of journalists went to North Africa, covered D-Day, the march across France, the liberation of Paris, the advance to reach the Russians at Torgau. The discovery of the concentration camp at Dachau. (This footage was used as evidence in the Nuremburg trials.) They showed us the trench where Hitler's body was incinerated. They ascended to Berchtesgaden.

There is some of the obligatory footage of generals interacting, of troops being reviewed. But they captured the misery and trauma all around them. Soldiers fought, lay wounded, were carted away dead. Civilians fled or suffered. Cities became heaps of brick-and-mortar caves of rubble. Prisoners wearily shuffled their way onto trucks. Concentration camp prisoners stumbled about in shock, or lay dead in heaps. It profoundly affected everyone involved in documenting it.

The filmmakers documented the Allied vision of World War II. It set down a true picture of populations at war, not romanticized, not prettied up. This sobering gathering of facts puts the lie to those who would claim that some of this never happened. Stevens turned to more serious fare upon his return from service, helming classics such as A Place in the Sun (1951), Shane (1953), Giant (1956), and The Diary of Anne Frank (1959).

This collection of film contains moments of tragic beauty, long looks into the faces of the captured, even moments of absurdity -- a deranged man in a top hat swings a dead rabbit at American soldiers. Throughout, there is not the feeling of it being a propaganda project. Here is an impeccable record of humanity at war.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Lassie Come Home.