I love this movie so much

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Maya Deren was an Avant-garde filmmaker who made experimental, dream-like narrative films during World War II. Her films were meant to use symbolism to convey a story or an idea. In her previous shorts, "Meshes of the Afternoon" and "At Land" we are told of a woman's struggles through symbolic objects and surrealism. This gives all her shorts a mysterious and dreamlike atmosphere. Watching them as a film with a story, you'll be left wondering "Huh? What just happened here?" So to analyze a film like this, you must watch it, then look at the symbolism, think about it, and piece together the narrative entwined into the imagery.In "Meshes of the Afternoon" a woman is struggling with her marriage, wondering if she made a good decision. This film (the director's first film) may have come from Deren's own life, as she had three different husbands. And in "At Land" the woman portrayed is struggling with her place in life. Maybe at one point, Deren too struggled with this same problem. Here, in this film, the woman shown is struggling with men.In the beginning, the woman is innocent. She knows no men and is free. After helping another woman ball up some yarn (symbolic of something, but I can't think what) a mysterious woman lures her into a new world: a world of men, which she knows nothing about.The woman is taken into a ballroom with people exchanging hands and talking. At first they are oblivious to her, communicating to us that men no nothing of her, either. But soon she has become part of their world too, a decision which she later regrets.Later, out in the garden a man is talking with other women. The woman we have been following looks on and watches. She sees the man freeze the other woman in time. The woman is shocked and tries to escape the world she has entered. She runs away while the man chases in choreographed movement. And, in a final pose, we see the woman shining as an angel, telling us she has finally freed herself of the world she had entered and is clean once more.Rita Christiani played the woman, while Maya Deren herself plays the woman at the beginning. The film is beautiful and artful. Who knows? Deren married three times, maybe that fact shows us that she too, like the woman in the film, struggled with men?

"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.

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").