shoreline

At Land (Maya Deren, 1946) opens with shots of the sea. In the surge of liquid a woman’s body is visible. There is the sensual curve of her dark dress, and the line of her neck. Her cool pale skin, the sheen of the cloth, the salt water offer a stretch of sensations. In a cascade of shots, the film cuts to her shoulders, her long neck, a reclining head. The sweep of the camera shows the rush of water over her body, how her image is deformed in the flow, how the form dissolves in the waves. Her body re-emerges. Her head is cast back, the water rinsing through her long hair. Her mouth is open in rapture. The image seems at first one of drowning. Her body recedes and returns in the frame, moved in the water, her flesh unworldly, morbid, and fragile. The sequence effects a metamorphosis, a sleight of hand. She is there, alive, born. The sea recedes before the film cuts to the woman on the shore. Her eyes are open. Her dark pupils are peculiarly animate....