Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

A large number of people are puzzled by this film, and are unable to decide what it is about. The solution is in fact fairly straightforward.

The film is a re-working of the well-known story of Orpheus and Eurydice, and it takes place in limbo, or Hades, the Greek place for the departed, which is nothing like as bad as Christian Hell. In fact, it's a very elegant sort of venue, possibly called Hotel Marienbad -- not Hotel California !. However, it's where memory is erased, and time and place have no meaning. Shadowy people come and go. Orpheus has a bit of a struggle to extract Eurydice. In fact almost the entire film is about his efforts. The statue of Orpheus leading Eurydice away keeps telling us what it's about.

The long, tall, thin, skeletal fellow is Death, who could lose, but always wins. Hades belongs to him. But Death does initially say he could lose. Why is that ? Answer: Amor Vincit Omnia. Orpheus represents the Life Force, which manages to defeat Death and escape from his dreary clasp. But only intermittently. The process has to be repeated, according to the season, hence the references to the previous year. Normally, Orpheus sings and plays on his lute, which bends the plants and trees, but here he seems to be playing a rather ponderous organ. Personally, I think it is rather an excellent film, but a bit too long.

Fmovies: After hearing about this film countless times in various interviews and critics books *particularly interviews with Peter Greenaway* I finally decided to give it a shot. And this film has definitely shot into my top five films of all time overnight.

Resnais does a good amount of things in this film that he had tried in 'Hiroshima Mon Amour', but they are all done more effectively in this, his follow-up to Hiroshima. The way the characters interact with each other and with the audience is perfect on every level, driving the confusion of the situation further into your mind as well as the characters. The editing is flawlessly non-linear and non-traditional, the cinematography is some of the best of the period. The setting in the hotel often reminded me of Kubrick's 'The Shining', with the paranoid music and long tracking shots.

I would say the best way to describe this film is 'Hiroshima Mon Amour' with a good touch of Bunuel thrown in. It is intentionally bizarre and leaves much interpretation to the viewer, but never strays into idiotic territory. 9 out of 10.

This mysterious film shows us a man and a woman in an extravagant and capacious hotel. The man insists that he had an affair with the lady last year in Marienbad (or was it somewhere else?) The woman denies it, and just wants the man to leave her alone. Perhaps the man did meet her, perhaps he didn't. Resnais puts the pieces there and lets us take what we can from it.

The beautiful looking establishment, complete with gardens of splendour, is an eerie setting for the film. The guests seem like they are in a trance most of the time. A card game is shown where a man cannot be beaten, he claims. The cinematography is brilliant. Dark, then white, giving a blinking effect at times; and constantly switching between different locations. The music throughout the film sounds like it's from an old church organ. I can understand why this film will put off some people, because it doesn't explain much, and does meander at a pedestrian pace. But approached in the right mood, and watched in a dark room, this is a film to appreciate. Peter Greenaway thinks so; the film was influential in the making of The Draughtsman's Contract, and is (supposedly) the film Greenaway most admires.

Last Year at Marienbad fmovies. Scenes at a European spa unfold while a man's mind tries to recollect a love affair of the past season. In one of the most deeply psychological films I have seen, memory itself seems to be the protagonist -- or is it the villain? What plot there is simply provides the material for a meditation on the uncertainty of knowing. The accomplishment of _Last Year at Marienbad_ is to make this point convincingly even in the case of that which one would not expect a man to have difficulty remembering: a sexual involvement and loss. It does so by a hypnotic combination of wheeling, dreamlike images of the resort's architecture and grounds, together with the incantatory, obsessive, recurrent tone of the narrative voice over. In doing this it also transforms a place where people go to be waited on and to play, into a labyrinth haunted by unsmiling shades, where remembering is both impossible and necessary.

Years come and go, but "Marienbad" seems to remain the same--intriguing, challenging, stimulating, and moving. Alain Resnais' classic emerges as a timeless work, with a memorable score (utilizing unique pipe organ music) by Francis Seyrig and striking photography by Sacha Vierny. Delphine Seyrig and Giorgio Albertazzi play out their "roles" amidst dark corridors, empty halls, baroque statuary and geometric gardens. Time seems to stand still in the world of Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet, as our rapt attention is focused on its distinctive unfoldment. The meaning seems to be in the work and the solution in the problem. We simply take it in and allow it to speak for itself.

"Marienbad" is one of those films which requires a full- size widescreen and an excellent print to weave its haunting magic. It's a one-of-a-kind film experience, and one to which one can return again and again to enjoy as a mystery, romance or meditation.

Cinema has, for the most part, been a relatively conservative art form. Perhaps it's the expense of making a feature film which has meant that they largely remain within limits and conventions imposed by commerce. Often those willing to experiment have been forced to work with low budgets and poor production values, and those regarded as more radical directors often have a very traditional approach to narrative.

But then there's Last Year in Marienbad. Robbe-Grillet was the leading light and main theorist of the nouveau roman, and already had masterpieces like In the Labyrinth and Jealousy behind him. His literary style is obsessed with visual description, meaning the jump to cinema was an obvious one. And he did it utterly without compromise.

Not that all the credit goes to Robbe-Grillet's scenario: Resnais' realisation of the ideas is near perfect, and Vierny's photography is a thing of wonder, creating a film of unique beauty.

It's possible just to sit back and enjoy it as a sumptuous treat, but there's a nagging feeling that you have to figure out what it all means. You just have to try to analyse it. Amongst all the repetitions of the dialogue, a phrase suddenly jumps out, that seems to be a key to crack the enigma, or is it just a red herring. Maybe next time I watch it, I'll crack it...

Apparently Andre Breton was one of the first to see it, and (understandably?) hated it. For all it's dreamlike atmosphere, this is fiercely structured, a game, but quite distinct from surrealism's Freudian games of chance. For Foucault and Deleuze, Robbe-Grillet's endless, inescapable mazes were paradoxically a route out of the prevailing existentialism and post-Marxism of the French intellectual elite.

A genuinely original film, showing the true potential of cinema, a challenge few since have had the courage to follow.

I need to watch it again...