Maya Deren: Experimental Films

What? I don't get it.

This is a bizarre series of short films: Meshes of the Afternoon, At Land, A Study in Choreography for Camera, Ritual in Transfigured Time, Meditation on Violence, and The Very Eye of Night. Most of them were filmed in the 1940s (the last one in the 50s). They're all in black & white, and there is no speaking in any of the six films; half are silent, the other half are set to music.

I feel like I have nothing intelligent to say about these films. Most of them concentrated on the beauty of dance-like movements, but I couldn't discern much in the way of plot or anything that might make sense.

The most interesting one was the first, Meshes of the Afternoon. It also came closest to having a plot, but I'm still not quite sure what happened. Dreams? Hallucinations? Death? All three?

I just thought Godard's films were inexplicable.

Fright Month: Nosferatu (1922)

This was kind of a misfire as far as fright is concerned. I think the main problem was the music. Sometimes the soaring orchestral score added to the atmosphere; more frequently it lent an almost unacceptably comedic air to the movie. Some of the music was really beautiful, but most of the time it didn't do a thing towards upping the creepiness factor.

There were at least three songs I totally recognized, and it's driving me crazy because I can't figure out what they were. I tried looking online for information regarding the score, but all I could find is that this movie has had a variety of scores, and the one I heard is most likely not the original.

A far cry from Edward Cullen, eh?

Maybe I'm uncultured, but I think this is the first silent film I've ever watched. It's got some serious over-actors (I was wishing that something would wipe that beatific smile off Jonathon Harker's face, and was quite pleased when the phantom stagecoach driver did the trick), though I suppose that, without the benefit of speech, some overly-dramatic body language was of necessity. As were, it seems, crazy eyebrows (see Renfield).

Citizens of 1922 must have been some seriously slow readers. Those title cards were onscreen for far longer than necessary.

I wonder why they changed Mina's name to Nina?