Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Captivating movie !

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

"Ritual in Transfigured Time" is a film by experimental movie maker Maya Deren. She made this one shortly after World War II when she was still in her 20s. Basically everything that applies to her other works describes this film as well. It's very experimental, has no real storyline, is in black-and-white and looks much older than from 70 years ago. Deren appears in this film herself, but there are also other cast members. The film runs for 15 minutes and is thus among her longest movies. The story does not really have anything to do with war or the political climate. The first half we see a party for example with really a lot of guest. Must have been a big occasion. The second half has some ancient references with statues etc. All in all, I am not a great fan of Deren's works and this movie here does not change my perception. Not recommended.

The first five minutes of Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946 )are probably the finest she did up until then. That first third still partakes of that atmosphere dreamline and supine characteristic of her earlier work, but stripped from that which the mind is quick to associate meaning to, that symbolic quality is often an end in itself rather than a means. The beauty of the surreal, and perhaps the most difficult thing to achieve, is to create the situation the viewer will project upon his own feelings rather than try and decipher the filmmaker's. The film still guides you in that it chooses X visual instead of Y but there's no right or wrong interpretation to be deciphered. Kind of like walking around London with a map of Berlin without knowing you're in London or the map is of Berlin. The scene in the crowded room wasn't quite as good, it's still a drone, but not a visually interesting one I thought. The dancing segment that closes the film recalls A Study in Choreography for Camera but how it all ties in remains a mystery.

Maya Deren has sometimes been called a proto-feminist due to the topics she explores in many of her films, including her famous "Meshes of the Afternoon" and the lesser known but still stunning "At Land". This film would be the one that comes closest to feminist concepts. Women in this short are trapped in "rituals" of subservience, marriage, and victimization, often being passed around, chased, or ogled by the men in their various aspects.If Deren's work is about dreams, this is probably the one that comes closest to an anxiety dream. The party scene (which I feel is slightly clichéd, but then again Deren may very well have been the one to have created these clichés) is claustrophobic, the chase is paranoiac, and many of the clothes the women wear are iconoclastic (nun-suit, any one?).My favorite scene involves the man who dance-leaps after the woman as she moves through Greek architecture. Deren captures the motion of the dancer in freeze-frame always in moments where he is balanced so as to look exactly like a Helenistic sculpture. It's another one of those Derenist moments that has an uncanny relevance even to those who aren't familiar with Deren's own personality.--PolarisDiB

Ritual in Transfigured Time is like a dream, meaning that the various sequences don't seem to have any connection to each other unless you try to approach this film in a different way and not as a conventional hollywood movie.The main character in the film is Rita Christiani who after a strange scene with Maya Deren herself who disappears startling Rita, appears in this ball with ladies and gentlemen dancing. This film has one of the most beautiful scenes in a Maya Deren's film when Rita Christiani while she's dancing she appears to float in the air.Unlike most films that were made 50 or more years ago Ritual in Transfigured Time appears to be timeless and a lot of directors who try to do something innovative should get a lesson or 2 from Maya Deren.I was very surprised to find out that the famous writer Anais Nin is in this movie as well (I was also very pleasantly surprised when I found out that avant garde composer John Cage was in another film by Maya Deren, "At Dark").