La Jetée

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La Jetée

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Chris Marker
Produced by Anatole Dauman
Screenplay by Chris Marker
Narrated by Jean Négroni
Starring Hélène Chatelain
Davos Hanich
Jacques Ledoux
Music by Trevor Duncan
Cinematography Chris Marker
Editing by Jean Ravel
Studio Argos Films
Distributed by Argos Films
Release dates
  • 16 February 1962 (1962-02-16) (France)
Running time 28 minutes
Country France
Language French
German

La Jetée (French pronunciation: ​[la ʒəte, ʒte], "The Jetty") is a 1962 French science fiction featurette by Chris Marker. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. The film runs for 28 minutes and is in black and white. It won the Prix Jean Vigo for short film.

The 1995 science fiction film 12 Monkeys was inspired by, and takes several concepts directly from, La Jetée.

Plot

"The Man", portrayed by Davos Hanich.

A man (Davos Hanich) is a prisoner in the aftermath of the Third World War, in a destroyed, post-apocalyptic Paris where survivors live underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries. Scientists research time travel, hoping to send test subjects to different time periods "to call past and future to the rescue of the present". They have difficulty finding subjects who can mentally withstand the shock of time travel, but eventually settle upon the prisoner, whose key to the past is a vague but obsessive memory, from his pre-war childhood, of a woman (Hélène Chatelain) he had seen on the observation platform ('the jetty') at Orly Airport shortly before witnessing a startling incident there. He had not understood exactly what happened, but knew he had seen a man die.

After several attempts, he reaches the pre-war period. He meets the woman from his memory, and they develop a romantic relationship. After his successful passages to the past, the experimenters attempt to send him into the far future. In a brief meeting with the technologically advanced people of the future, he is given a power unit sufficient to regenerate his own destroyed society.

Upon his return, with his mission accomplished, he discerns that he is to be executed by his jailers. He is contacted by the people of the future, who offer to help him escape to their time permanently, but he asks instead to be returned to the pre-war time of his childhood, hoping to find the woman again. He is returned and does find her, on the jetty at the airport. However, as he rushes to her, he notices an agent of his jailers who has followed him and realizes the agent is about to kill him. In his final moments, he comes to understand that the incident which he witnessed as a child, which has haunted him for his entire life, was his own death.

Cast

Production

La Jetée is constructed almost entirely from optically printed photographs playing out as a photomontage of varying rhythm. It contains only one brief shot (of the woman mentioned above sleeping and suddenly waking up) originating on a motion-picture camera, this due to the fact that Marker could only afford to hire one for an afternoon. The stills were taken with a Pentax Spotmatic[1] and the motion-picture segment was shot with a 35mm Arriflex.[2] The film has no dialogue aside from small sections of muttering in German and people talking in an airport terminal. The story is told by a voice-over narrator. The scene in which the hero and the woman look at a cut-away trunk of a tree is a reference to Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo, which Marker also references in his 1983 film Sans soleil.[3]

Influence and legacy

Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (1995) was inspired by and takes several concepts directly from La Jetée (acknowledging this debt in the opening credits). In 1996, Zone Books released a book which reproduced the film's original images along with the script in both English and French.[4] It was re-released in 2008, but is now out of print.[5] The 2003 short film, La puppé, is both an homage to and a parody of La Jetée.[6] The video for Sigue Sigue Sputnik's 1989 single "Dancerama" is also an homage to La Jetée.[7] The film is one of the influences in the video for David Bowie's "Jump They Say" (1993).[8] The music video for Isis's "In Fiction", from 2004's Panopticon, drew comparisons with La Jetée.[9] The song "Last Night at the Jetty" by Panda Bear has lyrics inspired by the themes of the film. The Time Traveler's Wife (2009) also takes inspiration in the relationship between the woman and the time traveller.[10][11] In 2010, Time ranked La Jetée first in its list of "Top 10 time-travel movies".[12] Kode9 (music, script), in collaboration with Ms. Haptic (narration, script), Marcel Weber (aka MFO) (images, script) and Lucy Benson (images, script) created an homage to La Jetée in 2011, for the Unsound Festival.[13][14] The plot of the homage centers around the woman instead of the man and is a 'reimagining' rather than a 'remix' in that it features a completely new, original script that further develops the narrative whilst remaining true to the original plot. Both stories function in harmony with one another. The images and music of "Her Ghost" are almost exclusively sourced from the original film, however they are significantly reworked so as to create an original piece. A live performance of "Her Ghost" was part of the Chris Marker retrospective at Centre Pompidou in Paris 2013.

In 2012, in correspondence with the Sight & Sound Poll, the British Film Institute deemed ″La Jetée″ as the 50th greatest film of all time.[15]

Home media release

In Region 2, the film is available with English subtitles in the La Jetée/Sans soleil digipack released by Arte Video. In Region 1, the Criterion Collection has released a La Jetée/Sans soleil combination DVD / Blu-ray, which features the option of hearing the English or French narration.

References

  1. ↑ Interview with Antoine Bonfanti, 2004
  2. ↑ La Jetée revue & dvd et site internet. Last accessed: 8 January 2008. (French).
  3. ↑ "On Vertigo", special feature on the Criterion Collection DVD of La Jetée and Sans soleil. The same scene also appears in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys.
  4. ↑ Marker, Chris (1992). La Jetée. New York: Zone Books. ISBN 978-0-942299-67-0.
  5. ↑ La Jetée at the MIT Press
  6. ↑ Independent Lens La puppé, backgrounder, 2008. Last accessed: 12 January 2008.
  7. ↑ Sigue Sigue Sputnik singles discography on Wayback Machine
  8. ↑ "David Bowie's 'Jump They Say'", special feature on the Criterion Collection DVD of La Jetée and Sans soleil
  9. ↑ Wang, Lee (12 December 2006). "Isis: Clearing the Eye DVD". PopMatters. Retrieved 2010-12-28.
  10. ↑ The time traveling film critic
  11. ↑ timlepczyk: Movies: La Jetée
  12. ↑ "La Jetée, 1962". Time. 26 October 2010
  13. ↑
  14. ↑ "‘Her Ghost’ kode9, MFO, Ms Haptic, Lucy Benson". lucy benson. Retrieved 2013-04-13. 
  15. ↑ "The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time". Sight & Sound September 2012 issue. British Film Institute. 1 August 2012. Retrieved 2012-12-19. 

External links

Films directed by Chris Marker
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