Last Year at Marienbad
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| Last Year at Marienbad | |
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| Directed by | Alain Resnais |
| Produced by | Pierre Courau Raymond Froment |
| Written by | Adolfo Bioy Casares (novel) Alain Resnais Alain Robbe-Grillet |
| Starring | Delphine Seyrig Giorgio Albertazzi Sacha Pitoëff |
| Music by | Francis Seyrig |
| Cinematography | Sacha Vierny |
| Editing by | Jasmine Chasney Henri Colpi |
| Release date(s) | June 25, 1961 |
| Running time | 94 min |
| Language | French |
| IMDb profile | |
L'année dernière à Marienbad (translated as Last Year in Marienbad in the UK and Last Year at Marienbad in North America) is a 1961 French movie directed by Alain Resnais, starring Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoëff.
It is famous for its enigmatic narrative structure, in which truth and fiction are difficult to distinguish, and the exact temporal and spatial relationship of the events is open to question. The oneiric nature of the film has fascinated and baffled audiences and critics, some hailing it as a masterpiece, whilst others find it incomprehensible.
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[edit] Plot
To say the film has a plot is not quite accurate. It depicts the repetitive, almost mathematical interactions of three characters and even at the end of the film, few plot-related questions have been answered. Only the relationship of the three central characters, who remain nameless, is firm.
A man (Man A) approaches a woman (Woman) at some indefinite chateau and asks "Didn't we meet at Marienbad last year?" The woman is non-committal and demure. "Didn't you say you would leave your husband and we would run away together?" he asks. Again, a very specific question has been raised, and although the woman says "No," they continue to talk as if they perhaps had indeed made plans. When a 2nd man (Man B), who may be "Woman's" husband approaches, the conversation ends somewhat awkwardly and the characters move on.
First time viewers (at this early point in the film) may still feel they should be looking for narrative clues so they can resolve the film from the standpoint of plot, and that the film will ultimately supply some "meaning." It soon becomes apparent that this is not the key to understanding what is being presented to you.
The film puts several motifs like this in play and begins to repeat them. The dialogues happen inside and outdoors on the grounds of the chateau.
- Society is depicted in the form of privileged others, often shown in black tie.
- A play which is mimetic of the structural relationship of the three characters is observed.
- The men at the chateau are seen passing the time with various games (Nim, target-shooting)
- Tracking shots of the chateau corridors are shown with ambiguous voiceover
The pieces repeat and sometimes occur indoor, sometimes outdoor. Edits occur which suggest that these events are repeated into the infinite.
[edit] Meaning
The film's deliberate ambiguity asks viewers for more engagement than they typically give; to provide a scenario that explains what is being offered (or less engagement if you choose, as a vocal audience who hates the film, insist that it is simply vacuous). The normal constraints of a passive audience being guided with explicit meaning provided in dialogue that clarifies, and a classical narrative structure are undermined.
Author Robbe-Grillet was a structuralist thinker, a French philosophical group that believed (among other things) that the key to social relationships is the network of structural relationships in place in society. That enormous framework and it's related appellations (brother, doctor, wife, etc.) is of more value in understanding society; and provides more meaning than the usual places we seek and derive meaning from.
Interested viewers can find numerous proposals or readings of the film elsewhere on the internet.
[edit] Filmic Effects
Perhaps the most disquieting single image a viewer retains from the movie is that of figures in a geometric formal garden. At a dramatic moment in the film, two characters (and the camera) rush out of the chateau and are faced with a tableau of figures arranged in a static garden; although the people cast long dramatic shadows, the gardens themselves do not. The oneric quality of this image is reminiscent of the works of Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, Yves Tanguy and Paul Delvaux.
- The shadows/no-shadows shot was created by painting the shadows of the figure on the ground.
- Multiple chateaus and their grounds were edited together to produce a filmic space without any concrete limits.
- The film has one or two remarkable match shots.
[edit] Influences
The film was inspired by the 1940 novel The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares.[citation needed]
The film has influenced (at least the look) of:
- TV commercials for Calvin Kleins Obsession (late 1980's)
- The New Order music video "World," which is created with just four long-takes.
[edit] Miscellaneous
In some of the movie's most memorable sequences, characters engage in a version of the game Nim.
Marienbad (Mariánské Lázně) is a town in the Czech Republic. The film's setting is unclear (although almost certainly not Marienbad), but was actually filmed at the Nymphenburg Palace, Munich, Germany.
[edit] Awards and legacy
The film was nominated for the 1963 Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay (Alain Robbe-Grillet), and it won the Golden Lion at the 1961 Venice Film Festival. In 1963 Adonis Kyrou declared the film a total triumph in his influential Le Surréalisme au Cinéma (p.206), recognizing the ambiguous environment and obscure motives within the film as representing many of the concerns of Surrealism in narrative cinema.
The cinematographic influence of this film is enormous: it has entered the visual language of popular culture, and audiences are now unwittingly aware of the film prior to viewing it. As well as influencing films, it has had an enormous influence on the evolution of music videos. One of the most obvious examples is the video for "To the End" by the British rock band Blur, which includes scenes echoing those found in the film.
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Ado Kyrou Le Surréalisme au Cinéma, (not located): Le Terrain Vague, 1963
- Jean-Louis Leutrat, L'Année dernière à Marienbad, London: British Film Institute, 2000
