Maya Deren’s film Meshes of the Afternoon belongs to the artistic direction of surrealism. It concentrates on the subconscious aspects of mental activity and paints a dreamlike, paradoxical, in its way threatening picture of the world. The image of noon in the title emphasizes the dual nature of reality in the film. The cinematography in this film is aimed at emphasizing precisely these shadow aspects of reality and highlighting their primary meaning, concentrating the viewer’s attention on them. The closeness of the camera in the scene with the falling key has the task of defocusing the viewer’s attention, depriving him of the feeling of being in a specific place.
The surrealism of the film lies in its spatial ambiguity, which creates for the viewer the feeling of losing touch with reality. The camera carefully chooses which elements of reality to reveal to the viewer, and that is why we see the heroine’s face for the first time only at the beginning of the second third of the film. The shadows are equal characters in the film, their movement, for example, in the frame with a hand lifting a flower, concentrates the maximum audience’s attention on itself.
The feeling of the presence of higher powers, observing and arranging what is happening, also does not leave the viewer. The episode with a woman’s hand outstretched from the sky, laying a flower on the asphalt, uses editing and overlaying of frames to create a fantastic illusion. The silhouette, hiding from the main character at the corner, refers to the paintings of the pioneer of surrealist painting, Giorgio de Chirico. Objects that move unexpectedly and are placed in unexpected settings are also borrowed from surrealist paintings. By isolating the camera from the general plans and focusing on them, the authors give them symbolic meaning. Such visual elements as the telephone and the knife on the stairs acquire the ability to read ambiguously – the operator calls not only to focus attention on them but also to give them meaning on their own.
The cinematography in the film is not only capable of decontextualizing space through concentration but also distorting space. In the middle of the film, the main heroine of the film is under the influence of an invisible force, running down a flight of stairs. The movement of the camera at this moment becomes extremely active – the camera makes waves and circular flights, corresponding to the choreography of the heroine. Because the very interaction of the actress with the space is dramatized, unusual angles create the illusion of being in an abstract and paradoxical space with different rules of gravity. Later, in the scene of the chase after the woman in the black veil, the camera is again synchronized with the movements of the heroine, simulating the swinging in different directions of the entire space of action, like rolling in a cabin. Thus, the operator often synchronizes his work with the tasks of storytelling, influencing the viewer through a shift in emphasis and disorientation in space.
Following the heroine and her perception of what is happening, the camera work carries the viewer along, allowing the action to be truly unpredictable. Editing is also a very important part of the film, representing not only its cohesive structure but also a means of artistic impact. In some scenes, editing is dynamized to fit the action – for example, the cut-ups of close-ups depicting a key falling down the steps of a staircase. In another scene on the stairs, the movement of the main character from step to step through the dynamic cutting of frames taken from one angle is demonstrated. Presumably, this scene predicts the reproduction of the protagonist’s personality.
Editing is also a tool for augmenting reality, creating a special effect. The elongated hand from the sky at the beginning of the film, as well as copies of the heroine that fit in one frame with her, are visual realizations of fantastic concepts that are impossible without editing and overlaying frames. In a sense, Derain echoes Georges Mellier, who used montage and combinatorial photography to strike the viewer’s imagination with an illusion. Editing in combination with operative work is also able to move characters and spectators in space – as is noticeable at the moment where the main character, getting up from a chair in the room, instantly finds herself on the ocean shore. The cinematography and editing construct the absurd and looped reality of this film, forcing the viewer to plunge into a state of waking dream similar to the heroine.
Any modern media is direct content and a format through which this content is broadcast. The distinction between cinematography and other forms of art appears to be a philosophical issue affecting 20th-century media theory. The format, that is, the limit, the boundaries in which the content is shown in the context of the cinema is the screen itself. Film critic Stanley gives a meaningful philosophical interpretation of the concept of a screen – it is something that makes us invisible, fencing us off from the real world during viewing. The screen, as a fundamental format for the existence of media cinematography, offers a cast of the director’s reality. The dynamics of cinematography also require separate consideration, as a combination of static and movement. Moving images give the narration in the film plot dynamics, while static images can express symbols and abstract pictures that characterize the philosophy and inner worldview of the director.
Cinema differs from other media by the presence of “static movement,” that is, dynamically replacing each other, expressing a semantic or figurative sequence. Comparing cinematography with other media makes it possible to assess the extent to which cinema is a unique way of creating and communicating information. It is through the comparison of the tasks and possibilities of cinema and other formats of the existence of art that it becomes possible to name the unique artistic means inherent in this type of art. In this aspect, the animation is not so much a capture of the author’s version of reality as an artist’s attempt to reconstruct and modify the picture of reality.
If one compares cinema with photography, a structural discord between the approaches of photographers and filmmakers to the very concept of a frame becomes obvious. Cavell points out that directors can specifically draw attention to a shot using zoom or zoom techniques. From the point of view of camera work, this technique is key to focusing the viewer’s attention on the subject. In the context of photography, such a technique is impossible – the photographer initially focuses the viewer’s attention, immediately providing them with all possible clues for interpretation.
In the case of photography, the creator initially chooses the angle and focus with which he isolates his frame from the rest of the world. The photographer isolates the frame from reality, making it an independent and hermetic work. The situation is completely different, as Cavell points out with the cinema format. The director uses cinematographic means not to reduce the rest of the world since the principle is completely different. Cinema is rather a window through which the viewer gets the opportunity to observe the world. Cinema technology is capable of capturing this world and transforming it in visual and temporal terms.
In Close-Up, for example, the media of cinematography is used to tell a story that mixes fiction and reality. The captions of the film are displayed over the frame of a newspaper press, which symbolizes the reality of the event and its realization in a non-fictional world. The performers of the main roles periodically directly contact the director behind the camera. The very first scene of the director’s communication with his family creates a feeling of the documentary nature of what is happening. However, for the director, the reality of what happened is a reason to consider the event at the heart of the film as a kind of metaphor for the status of cinema.
The episode of the director’s communication with Sabzian in prison initially gives a general picture of the action but gradually concentrates on Sabzian’s face in a long and slow increase of two minutes duration. The scene maintains focus on the hero’s face until the very end of the scene until he is taken out, which emphasizes the importance of the choice of the operator. Additional meaning is Sabzian’s face as the face of an imposter director, who is, in fact, the catalyst for the entire production of the film.