In partnership with The Film Foundation, iconic film director and classic movie lover Martin Scorsese's exclusive monthly contribution to the TCM newsletter Now Playing in October 2020.
Meshes of the Afternoon (1944) (October 7 at 6am ET; part of Women Make Film) and Cat People (1942) (October 2 at 9:30pm ET; part of Fright Favorites)
For someone who grew up watching films made in Hollywood, it was a startling experience to be exposed to other kinds of pictures made under vastly different circumstances. I still remember the sensation of seeing Italian films when I was young and just how distinct they felt on every level--character, story, pace, what actually constituted a scene, or even a shot. There was Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali, a movie made by and about the people who were always in the background of the films we were used to seeing. And then, my first exposures to avant-garde cinema and the films of Maya Deren.
When did I see Meshes of the Afternoon for the first time? Whatever the year or the circumstances, it was an eye-opening experience. What struck me then was the bravery of the filmmaking, the freedom and the unearthly beauty of the images. Deren was exploring the feeling of being drawn again and again into pursuit--the pursuit of something, something that seems within reach but finally isn't...you're about to reach it and then everything is suddenly thrown off kilter. There are images in this picture, which is part of TCM's Women Make Film program, that I've never forgotten: the cloaked, mirror-faced figure that keeps appearing; Deren thrown into space and above the room she keeps returning to, where she hovers and looks down at herself; and the remarkable close-up of her face looking through a window and observing herself reenacting the dream she's still dreaming. Meshes of the Afternoon was shot in Hollywood by Deren's husband Alexander Hammid (who also appears in the film and is credited as co-director), and California light is crucial to the picture.
It also bears an interesting relationship to certain Hollywood films being made at the time, particularly Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur's Cat People, almost always programmed on TCM around Halloween. Deren herself had a special hatred of Hollywood moviemaking, which she felt to be "a major obstacle to the definition and development of motion pictures as a creative fine-art form." She wasn't alone: many avant-garde filmmakers felt the same. But as young people drawn to the cinema in the early '60s, we didn't have to choose one over the other--some of us did, but we didn't have to. We had the option of reconciling them. When I think of these two pictures--one made on 35mm at RKO for what was considered a low budget of $150,000 and the other shot on 16mm for $275--I don't see them as opposed but complimentary, made at the same moment in history in the same place.
One was a work of poetic expression, the other was a tale exquisitely told by master craftsmen. And at the core of each was a striking similarity: both films were about haunted women in the grip of an obsession, compelled to repeat the same acts, both edging toward self-destruction. Both films have inspired many people over the years, including me. And now, years after they were made, we can set old divisions aside and see the way they interact.
