Deren and Anger were contemporaries of one another and shared an interest in earlier European avant-garde filmmakers like Cocteau and Bunuel. Have you seen Anger's film Fireworks? There's definite similarities between that and Meshes. They were both on the outer-outer fringes of Hollywood - less self-consciously in the case of Deren but, Meshes anyway, besides obviously being key to the whole Underground Film thing, seems to anticipate certain aspects (albeit in a roundabout way) of films like Sunset Bvd and Mullholland Dr. It's been described as a 'sunshine noir', which really works for me.
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