Summary:

A solitary flower on a long driveway, a key falling, a door unlocked, a knife in a loaf of bread, a phone off the hook: discordant images a woman sees as she comes home. She naps and, perhaps, dreams. She sees a hooded figure going down the driveway. The knife is on the stair, then in her bed. The hooded figure puts the flower on her bed then disappears. The woman sees it all happen again. Downstairs, she naps, this time in a chair. She awakes to see a man going upstairs with the flower. He puts it on the bed. The knife is handy. Can these dream-like sequences end happily? A mirror breaks, the man enters the house again. Will he find her? Source

Review:

Maya Deren is the only female surrealist/experimental director I've heard of.  That may change as I learn more about film but what probably won't change is my opinion that Deren is probably one of America's greatest directors.  Not for influence or even breadth but for artistic talent.  Deren's distinction is coupled with a cinematic vision that equals Buñuel and like him she burst on the scene with a brilliant visionary first feature, Meshes of the Afternoon, from which the majority of these screens are taken.  All of her films are incredible but I'm partial to Meshes and Ritual in Transfigured Time which features Anaïs Nin.

My purpose is to make an experimental motion picture (the physical scope of which is subject to material conditions) in which I will attempt to develop a cinematic art form, originating in the creative potentialities of the movie camera itself, and freed from the influence of other artistic idioms, such as literature, theater, the plastic and pictorial arts. Maya Deren, 1944

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