LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (L'ANEE DERNIERE A MARIENBAD)

France, 1961, 93 minutes, Black and white.
Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoeff.
Directed by Alain Resnais.

Last Year at Marienbad has become famous as one of the films which seems to sum up best the transformation in cinema techniques and the broadening of consciousness of content in the cinema of the 60's. It won the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival in 1961 and has been quite commercially popular as well as a favourite with film groups.

Novelist Alain Robbe- Grillet wrote the screenplay. He has since made the film Trans-Europe? Express. Director Resnais made the famous short documentary Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog, 1955) and won acclaim for his feature Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959). He has since made Muriel (1963) and La Guerre est Finie (1965), collaborated in Loin de Vietnam (1967) and made Je t'aime, Je t'aime (1968).

Last Year at Marienbad is so complex that it is very difficult to prepare an ordinary set of questions. Rather, some references are given for background reading and some of the important features are referred to. ,

References:
1. "Film Makers on Film Making" (ed..Harry M.Geduld, Pelican, 1967). This book includes a short interview with Resnais on Marienbad as well as a discussion with Resnais and Robbe- Grillet about, the film.
2. "The Cinema of Alain Resnais", Roy Armes, Zwemmer International Film Guides.
3. "Man and the Movies" (ed. W. R. Robinson, Pelican, 1969).
4. Time Magazine gave the film a full page review, March 16, 1962, p. 55.

1. Time, appearance and reality. Time is past, present, future and conditional; all are illustrated. What is the chronology of the plot? Is this possible? relevant? The film is a riddle, an enigma, open to many (any?) solution.
The relativity of truth; are appearances truth and reality; where is truth, where reality? Who lies in the film? "What is reality if it is not what one thinks it is?" Critics say time is 'Dismantled' in the film and the audience is consequently immersed in 'total cinema'. What does this mean? Can the causes of actions be found, understood? In its playing with time, the film explores blind alleys of action as well as real avenues for achieving goals. Alain Resnais says the film is about 'Degrees of reality'. Resnais gives the example of meeting a friend who had been in India. He thought of her as at the ruins of Angkor in a blue dress. She had never been to Angkor and she was wearing the blue dress when he met her. How real, therefore, is Resnais' insight into this woman's being in India? (In the film consider the clashes of sound, comment and visual image. Which is true? Consider the woman with
300 photographs in her drawer.)

2. Points of view.
Robbe- Grillet says that as he sees it, the meeting never happened and the man is persuading the woman. Resnais says that he shot the film thinking that the meeting happened last year. The man, therefore, performs something of the function of a psychiatrist forcing the woman to accept the events she is repressing. The hotel is something of a clinic. (A Caligari image.) Resnais says he is interested in films of pure feeling and their interplay even without clearly defined characterisations of the persons whose feelings are explored. The film visualises the way memory works: not the tedious repetition of the details of what happened, but the recalling of one's feelings and impressions during that time. Consciousness is a stream; it has various levels - surface impressions, explicit knowledge and feeling in depth, hidden and subconscious wishes.

3. Audience response.
Resnais says this should be contemplation, meditation, a series of advances and retreats. The film is like a sculpture, the audience can move around it appreciating it from different angles. Because of this 'dismantling' of time, the audience can put it together again in its own way' the audience becomes part of the film and creates its own interpretation. la this process too exhausting so that the human spirit resists the challenge and cannot sustain such a long analysis?

4. Story and theme.
Some see the story as that of a seduction. The authors suggest the title. Persuasion. Human passion and love. (Is this film cold or tender concerning love?) The theme of the necessity of making a decision.

5. Symbols.
Resnais says there are no symbols or allegories in the film but things that can be taken as symbols.
The Baroque architecture and decoration (usually exuberant, but here made lugubrious).
The ordered gardens.
The Statue and the interpretations of the statue.
The changes of clothes.
The formal patterns of costume, manners, stances.
The impersonal, unemployed and fashionable jet set (and their games and immobility).
The monotony of the voice of the man (and the organ music).
The game that is played with matches, cards, etc. How does one win or lose?

6. Techniques.
The role of the organ music.
The widescreen images, the roving camera, the variety of shots, lighting, cross-cutting, editing.

7. Myths.
Several myths suggest themselves in connection with the film: The Eternal Masculine and Feminine; the coming of Death and his giving a year's respite to his victims} the quest for the Grail; the Labyrinth; heroes, sleeping beauties; two ghosts looking back to life.