The Cinema of Alain Resnais

*Shudder*

Perfectly written essay on Marienbad C&W. Fine, fine work.

I mean seriously. Some of those phrasings were very beautiful. Big fan of your prose, bra.

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I'll hold off on mark's others until I've seen them. I've Hiroshima Mon Amour'd so far, sadly.

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Sowhaa... Resnais. Yeah. I need to watch more of him.

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

Here's a link to Bordwell's essay on Marienbad's form.

He just goes through and points out the non-narrative inconsistencies and hints at what they could mean. Just a link.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Where are you back-and-forth extreme-type people? This is something which should stand out for people looking for it.

My Personal Interpretation:

Basically in this film, X comes to take away A from her supposed husband M. She denies, he insists. Gradually, he starts convincing her that they both have met last year at fredericsbad, marienbad or some other place. Slowly, she yields, but still in denial. Towards the end, X fumbles and starts having doubts in his story. The film ends as X takes A away in the night.

Now, how i see it is that this entire film purely exists in the mind of X. X recalls his meeting with A through flashbacks and double flashbacks, and his slow narrative guides the viewer through the barroque hotel like an invisible hand. The 'dreamlike' sequences have a surreal feel, and the deadpan expressions of the guests all serve to illustrate that it is X who is recalling the past incident from different perspectives, all of which are fabricated by X only.

What i like about this film is that everything, and almost everything, is subjected to change without notice. Conversations which take place in a scene seem to describe a totally different scene, distorting the viewer's perception between what he sees on screen and the narration.

Why then do i say that this film is X's dream? Whether or not a murder took place in the film is uncertain. Was A murdered by X, or by her husband M who knew of her relationship with X, or did A successfully escape with X? The answer is unclear. However, i feel that a murder indeed took place. The deadpan expressions, the gloomy style, the man who always seem to win the match-stick game, the confining rooms, endless corridors which seem to entrap them all seem to hint that the place is like a cemetary. We can even argue that X is death itself, who comes after one year on the same day to take away A.

I interpret it as X trying to reconcile himself with the fact that A was murdered. His regret manifested on the screen when we hear him fumbling towards the end. "No, no... but you werent dead. That was not how it ended", or “No, that ending is not right, I need you alive, as you were then" a strange line uttered by the narrator X. And the viewer is invited to live in his memory, and sub-consciously, we the audience are fooled by him. In a certain sense, the whole premise of this film is for X to convince us that he did not inevitably cause the death of A. The judgment therefore lies with us, to choose how it ended, what the "correct" story should be.


What do you think??

The main thing I think is that if you believe that to be true, is it just another of Resnais' basic concepts or is that film completely removed from all his others?

Resnais himself said that this film does not have any symbolism whatsoever, i don't even think that he has any concept or idea about what exactly it is all about. Still there are other interpretations about what it meant. There are some scenes which i still do not understand. For instance why was the 'play' scene shown twice, once at the beginning and the other at the end? And what significance does the shooting room have?

I believe him because otherwise I can certainly find it a bore. I enjoy the flick up to a point if it's a horror film.

I saw Last Year at Marienbad last night and I have absolutely no idea what to think of it. On the one hand, it's a brilliant liberation from narrative and I have a hard time naming another film which better displays the limitless possibilities of cinema. It's also beautifully shot and turns the "well-dressed European people contemplating their existence" genre into a nightmare. On the other hand, it's so cold and icy that I had a hard time warming up to it.

I'm interested in hearing everyone's thoughts though, if you haven't already posted them here!

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"Puns are the highest form of literature." -Alfred Hitchcock

Dont worry. The first time I watched it I fell asleep halfway through the film. Watch it two more times and you might change your opinion of it just like Persona. In fact, it's a much more opaque film than Persona because the entire film is but a dream sequence. Everything or nothing can be the truth; a surrealistic Lynchian nightmare.


Here's why this film is so great:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054632/board/nest/63170631

Interesting stuff! It's fascinating to see all the angles Marienbad can be viewed from- I don't think I've seen another movie with such an infinite number of interpretations. I think the idea that makes the most sense to me is that X raped A one year ago at Marienbad, and the film represents his imagination/dream/memory. However, I'm still unsure about who (if anyone) was killed, and the role M plays.

Certainly a haunting film, one that I definitely need to see again.

A few more questions I have about Last Year at Marienbad:

1) Do you think there was a murder?
2) What is the significance of the two statues?
3) Does the matchstick game represent anything?

Also, something cool I found:



Apparently, Hitchcock made a surprise cameo outside of his own movies...

Hitchcock's "cameo" might be a hint 1) that there was a murder and 3) that X's role in the matchstick games suggests that perhaps everything in the film is deterministic. In other words, there is only one outcome no matter which interpretation you choose. I think it's also reasonable to say we saw both X and A debating over the meaning of these statues (ironically also a man and a woman) which could mean them analysing whose version of the story is correct. I have not seen this film for 3 years and really wish to do so after hearing the news of his passing. RIP Alain Resnais.

It's a cardboard.

Really terrible news. It's amazing that Resnais was able to make films for so much of his life.

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Mubi

Just watched Last Year at Marienbad, what a masterpiece...

I have a few ideas on interpretations. Like you Mark, from the beginning all of it seemed like a ghost story to me, and I think the film might take place in some type of hell, or even more likely, purgatory. There is a lot of religious symbolism in the film that I noticed, mainly with the different games, like a cross is formed after Nim, and towards there are crosses looks like a circle of dominoes, there are crosses forming on the inside.

I'm thinking maybe the film takes place mainly from the mind of the female, who at Marienbad had an affair with somebody else but refused to run away with him because of her husband, but then her husband found out (perhaps from finding the photo in her draw) so he killed her. And now she is being haunted by regret.

Or maybe the male has been condemned to hell for his actions, he met and fell in love with this woman who he loved but refused to be with him, so he raped her, which led to the husband shooting him, and now he must spend eternity in a never ending purgatory where he his haunted by how close but how distant he was from this woman.

If you focus more on the floating Hitchcock which I noticed immediately, what if this is a sort of symbol for the main character. hitchcock was obsessed with women, and often used murder in his stories. Maybe Hitchcock is floating because he is dead, he is a ghost, like the man who was obsessed with this woman.

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Thanks Mark F for this interesting topic!

I have an admiration for Alain Resnais even if I don't like all his films. His last films are like filmed theater. I like him for a few reasons : I like the way he edited his films. He was a great editor like Eisenstein. The second reason : my best friend was an extra on the filming of My American Uncle, he told me he was a very humble and shy guy (not "conceited" at all ). Resnais gave to my friend a roll of film of My American Uncle. Alain Resnais was often considered as an intellectual but his dream was to make a film on Harry Dickson or on Mandrake the Magician. He has even talked to Stan Lee to make an adaptation of... Spiderman. Yeah, it sounds crazy

Mark F, have you seen the short movie Toute la Mémoire du monde?
This film was an order from the National Library of France but Resnais made a film about the culture and how the BnF "records" the memory of our civilization. It's a suffocating film which prefigures N&F and The Last Year At Marienbad.


I like Hiroshima Mon Amour very much. I studied the film when I was in high school, then I know the genesis very well but Mark F explained everything very well. By the way, the screenwriter Marguerite Duras was a famous French writer and this is why the text of the film has a literary style. Hiroshima Mon Amour is a beautiful film about the memory of History. The film combines the collective History (IIWW, Hiroshima) and the individual history (the French woman, the Japanese man).

Night and Fog is also about the memory of History and how to show concentration/extermination camps on the screen. Films about concentration/extermination camps always stir controversy, even The Schindler's List (Godard said about Spielberg he was the first Jewish to reconstruct Auschwitz )
It's interesting you told the reactions of your students. In France, Night and Fog is always shown in the high schools. This is my philosophy teacher who has showed us this film because we had courses about Hannah Arendt (The Origins Of Totalitarianism and Eichmann In Jerusalem).
I have to admit I never cried by watching Night and Fog but I think the awareness is more through the analysis than through tears.

I liked The Last Year At Marienbad when I've seen it for the first time but I was only 16 or 17. Maybe if I see it again, I wouldn't like it anymore. I liked My American Uncle. Coeurs : meh! Wild Grass : meh, meh! And the last dialog is so... weird. And I've been disappointed by Providence.

(Sorry for the Frenglish )

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