He_who_lurks "The Very Eye of Night" was Deren's last complete film and is probably one of her weakest films as director. She started out with symbolic avant-garde shorts, but changed later to studies of the human body in motion. This is one of these and is more meant to be an art film than a symbolic narrative tale. Like the other reviewer, I too would like to say that Teiji Ito's music was great and kept the thing from becoming too dull.Yes, I know that in the past I've called her "Meditation on Violence" boring, but that was because the film was too long when I saw it silent. This film however, deserves a lower rating than that effort because there's a shorter version of this effort out there. In 1951, Deren made a much shorter, 6-minute film called "Ensemble for Somnambulists" which was apparently unfinished and features the exact same idea of filming dancers in negative and superimposing them onto a backdrop! Apparently, years later Deren looked at that film and thought, "now I'll make a longer version of that and get it released this time!" The results, however, are dull for anyone who isn't a Maya Deren or dance fanatic.That said, I still find this to be somewhat interesting. Unlike "Ensemble for Somnambulists" the images here are more sharp and look gorgeous. Maya Deren didn't really seem to know when enough was enough, but this movie still manages to be artistic and beautiful within its short (yet overlong) run-time.

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "The Very Eye of Night" is one of Maya Deren's longer films at 15 minutes. It is also her last work as writer and director counting her known movies. She was 40 when this one was made here and unfortunately dead 3 years later already. There is not too much to this short movie. We see a starry sky early on and after this introduction ballet dancers appear in the sky. We do not really see their faces though as this one is probably mostly about the aesthetics of dancing and the figures they are presenting. Still Ihave to say this is not really that much content and even starts to drag a bit, even at 15 minutes. It does not get too interesting in the first place. I felt this film looks like it could have been 50 years older maybe, not only because of the black-and-white, but also because of how simple it is. Hands down, some movies from 1898 told more of a story. Really only worth a watch for ballet lovers.

jazzest Inverted images of dancers with fixed outlines move across a starry sky. From the contemporary point of view, The Very Eye of Night, Maya Deren's last finished short, looks like a special effects computer application's tutorial; an innocent use of the "latest" technology comes to look cheap eventually. Probably it is an exercise piece whose experiment would have been developed if she had not passed away three years later.

wildstrawbe The Very Eye of Night is according to some critics Maya Deren's weakest work something that enraged Maya. I do understand why someone would not like this film as much as her first films but I still think it's quite good. The use of a balet that dances with a starry sky in the background (a very surreal picture) wouldn't interest me that much if it wasn't for Teiji Ito's music which is what really makes this film for me.