[In the following review, Wees asserts that The Legend of Maya Deren "is not only for fans of Maya Deren, but for everyone interested in the development of the avant-garde film movement in North America."]

With photographs, letters, interviews, articles by and about Maya Deren, and unpublished documents of many sorts, including sketches and scripts for her films—all held together by the clear and intelligent commentary of Catrina Neiman—the second installment of The Legend of Maya Deren chronicles the years during which Deren made her first four films and became a well-known figure among the artists and intellectuals of New York. The angst-ridden images and themes of isolation in her early films give no hint of the energetic, outgoing, exceedingly practical, and socially accomplished person who created an audience for her films and, in the process, prepared the way for successive waves of American avant-garde film-makers. For the first time we have a clear sense of Deren's public presence and a fuller but far from complete picture of her private life, at the beginning of her career.

As Deren learned film-making quickly, so she also quickly arrived at a theoretical position on film, a position that changed very little during the rest of her life, as can be seen by comparing "Cinema as an Art Form," published in 1946, with "Cinematography: The Creative Use of Reality," which appeared less than a year before her death in 1961. One indication of how her theories took shape is the change in labels she applied to her early films: from "abandoned" (in the spirit of Valéry: "A work is never completed, but merely abandoned"), to "classicist" (by which she meant films which subordinate personal expression to the demands of "form"), to "ritualistic" (implying for Deren "depersonalization of the individual" and stylization of action so that its meaning becomes "forever valid for all time and place").

Ritual and "de-personalization" had become Deren's guiding principles by the time she completed Ritual in Transfigured Time. One can only speculate on the reasons for this, but it is notable that with the exception of a few of Deren's poems, there is very little in The Legend that could be called truly personal. What Deren herself referred to as her habitual "intellectualizations and labored analysis" proved to be excellent strategies for keeping the personal at bay and avoiding the spontaneous, deeply personal, and revealingly autobiographical dimensions of art.

Why was it so important for her to separate the artist from her art? Was the nearly obsessive orderliness she imposed on her daily life (to which several of The Legend's interviewees attest) evidence of her fear of unruly and disruptive thoughts and feelings? Was her stubborn dismissal of psychoanalytic or even autobiographical readings of Meshes of the Afternoon an after-the-fact recognition that the film was, indeed, too personal? Was her impromptu dancing at parties the one release of emotions she regarded as safe? The Legend does not ask, let alone answer, questions of this sort, but they will have to be answered eventually, if we are to have a proper biography of Maya Deren.

On the other hand, The Legend is informative and forthright on another controversial aspect of Deren's career: her indebtedness to her second husband, Alexander Hammid. The years covered in this volume are precisely the years she and Hammid were married, and the editors draw extensively—and uncritically—on his comments and those of his wife, Hella Heyman Hammid, who was Deren's principal cinematographer for At Land and Ritual in Transfigured Time. Their evidence indicates that Hammid not only taught Deren the basic of cinematography and editing while they were making Meshes of the Afternoon, but shared equally in all aspects of the film's conception and execution. "One of those perfect collaborations," Deren called it later. Hammid also continued to assist Deren on her subsequent films, though his help is not recognized in the films' credits. Not only had Hammid made his own personal and lyrical films before he met Deren, but his admiration for independent, experimental work in film was as great as hers and no doubt encouraged her to stick to her convictions about film as an independent art form. Hammid's essay, "New Fields—New Techniques," published in 1946, could easily be mistaken for one of Deren's, and demonstrated that husband and wife shared, in Neiman's words, "the same vision for the future of their art." If Deren had not met and married Hammid, it is quite possible that her "legend"—were it to exist at all—would not include film.

Thanks to the work of Clark, Hodson, and Neiman, we are able to watch that legend taking shape, even as Deren's film career begins. The films made their contribution, of course, but equally important was the powerful impression Deren made as a person, which is preserved in the vivid impression of her appearance and personality recorded in this volume—compounded by her own tireless efforts to promote her films and disseminate her ideas through letters, lectures, and articles, also well represented here. In these efforts Deren singlehandedly created (or re-created, if one recalls the similar efforts of Germaine Dulac a generation earlier) the model followed by later film artists seeking a receptive and knowledgeable audience for avant-garde films. This volume is not only for fans of Maya Deren, but for everyone interested in the development of the avant-garde film movement in North America.