Événement

Last Year at Marienbad @ Robert Classic French Film Festival

Alain Resnais, 1961, 94 min., B&W, 35mm projection source

Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais epochal Last Year at Marienbad has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. Written by Alain Robbe-Grillet, the radical master of the Nouveau Roman (New Novel), this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present. The film tells the deliberately ambiguous story of a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-filled château they now find themselves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings, diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais investigation into the nature of memory is simultaneously disturbing and romantic.

The Village Voices J. Hoberman describes Marienbad as a sustained mood, an empty allegory, a choreographed moment outside of time, and a shocking intimation of perfection. Responding to the films formidable reputation, the Chicago Readers Jonathan Rosenbaum laments: Its too bad Last Year at Marienbad was the most fashionable art-house movie of 1961-62, because as a result its been maligned and misunderstood ever since. The chic allure of Alain Resnais second feature a maddening, scintillating puzzle set in glitzy surroundings produced a backlash, and one reason its defenders and detractors tend to be equally misguided is that both respond to the controversy rather than to the film itself. I am now quite prepared to claim that Marienbad is the greatest film ever made, and to pity those who cannot see this, proclaimed one French critic, even as others ridiculed what they perceived as the film's pretentious solemnity overlooking or missing its playful, if poker-faced, use of parody as well as its outright scariness.

With an introduction and post-film discussion by Robert Garrick, attorney, board member of the French-preservation nonprofit Les Amis, and former contributor to the davekehr.com film blog.

Sponsored by Les Amis