It is possible to propose … that [Maya Deren's] Meshes of the Afternoon finds its central derivations from a film made by Chaplin in 1916…. 1 A.M., a momentary departure from Chaplin's preoccupations with the Tramp, contains a wide range of formal characteristics which influence Meshes, not only directly but by an indirection through Dada and surrealism. Dada, the aesthetic movement which generated surrealism, which engendered the comic and irrational strategies of surrealist cinema, is, of course, most intimately affiliated with American comedy, with Sennett and Keaton and Chaplin. The leap from Chaplin's 1 A.M. to Dada to [Buñuel's] Un Chien Andalou to Meshes of the Afternoon covers, quite obviously, a whole range of aesthetic variables which constitute the history of film itself, but it is here possible to substantiate formal affinities between two diverse works, possible to determine derivations, by way of a simple inventory of respective designs...