Maya Deren

In her reading Maya Deren says, "A major portion of the creative action consists of amanipulation of time and space...The kind of mapipulation of time and space to which I refer becomes itself part of the organic structure of a film." As we discussed in class Deren does this by manipulating the stairs. She uses the same set of stairs but makes them look like different stairs by taking different perspectives. As well as making the stairs to not look like stairs for example when the camera is upside down and it looks as though she is crawling on the ceiling and you can not tell that she really truly is not. Also she manipulates time by the repetition and looping of the events in the first short film we watched. She is manipulating time by the main character watching herself out the window walk toward the nun, walking up the stairs as if in a dream like state watching herself go through this routine over and over as if it were truly manipulating time. You also see Deren manipulating space in the beach/dinner scene when she is crawling up the tree of some sort but then cuts back to the dinner table where she is crawling acrossed it. Making it as though there is a break in reality what she sees and what we may see is not necesarily the same thing.
The best thing about Deren's writings on her creative use and reality is that she practices what she preaches. Everything she goes over in her writings she uses in her films and is influential to many other filmographers.

Last Year at Marienbad

As discussed in class, it was difficult to not analyze this film and just watch it for it's illustrious shot sequences and dream like qualities. I found it to be an oxymoron as a whole. For example, it was brought up in class the photograph in the reading. The picture of the garden where the people have shadows due to the placement of the light from the sun but the statues and the trees have no shadow at all. The director seems to do this throughout the film especially with his main character X. "X" doesn't seem to have a clue as to what is really, real. He claims to have met A a year earlier and he has been waiting for this whole time as per her request. He makes outrageous claims of raping her and her maybe husband shooting her but after realizing this is not what he wanted to come out of his story he retracted those statements and rewrote in his head what "truly" happened.

What really intrigued me about this film was the repitition. In the beginning of the film you hear a man repeating dialogue about the never ending hallways and the emptiness. You also see a bunch of repitition in the shots being taken for example the shots of the gardens and the rooms that A stays in. I feel as though this plays in part of X's psychological state. You know the saying that if you tell youself something enought times even if it is the farthest things from the truth you will start to believe it. Well I believe this is taking place with X. He is telling this story over and over in different sorts and versions like he is trying to convince himself that they truly happened or even more so trying to convince A that they really happened. I feel like this whole film is a maze trying to be figured out. You do not see the shots in sequential order, or like the reading states "linear fashion". As well as, the scenes and actions of the actors don't happen in compelete order or sense.

This story is truly dizzying, however, it was beautifully shot and the effects were stimuluating. No matter how dizzying the storyline it forces the viewer to continue to watch and figure out what the director is trying to say or get accomplished.