L'année dernière à Marienbad (1961)

Director:

Alain Resnais

Writer:

Alain Robbe-Grillet (scenario and dialogue)

Release Date:

7 March 1962 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Plot:

In a huge, old-fashioned luxury hotel a stranger tries to persuade a married woman to run away with him...

Plot Keywords:

Hotel | Card Game | Monologue | Surrealism | Cult Director

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 2 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Delphine Seyrig	...	A / Woman
Giorgio Albertazzi	...	X / Stranger
Sacha Pitoëff	...	M / Escort / Husband
Françoise Bertin	...	Un personnage de l'hôtel
Luce Garcia-Ville
Héléna Kornel
Françoise Spira
Karin Toche-Mittler
Pierre Barbaud
Wilhelm von Deek
Jean Lanier
Gérard Lorin
Davide Montemuri
Gilles Quéant
Gabriel Werner

Also Known As:

L'anno scorso a Marienbad (Italy)
Last Year at Marienbad (USA)
Last Year in Marienbad (UK)

Runtime:

94 min

Country:

France | Italy

Language:

French

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Hong Kong:I | Italy:T | Argentina:16 | Finland:K-16 | UK:U

Filming Locations:

Amalienburg Hunting Lodge, Nymphenburg Palace, Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Company:

Cocinor

Trivia:

One of the films included in "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way)" by Harry Medved and Randy Lowell.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Exterior night scenes were shot day-for-night, but the sky and reflections of it were allowed in the frame, and they appear as bright white instead of black. This may have been intentional to emphasize the surreality of the film.

Quotes:

[X wanders through the hotel's corridors cataloging items he sees]
X: Empty salons. Corridors. Salons. Doors. Doors. Salons. Empty chairs, deep armchairs, thick carpets. Heavy hangings. Stairs, steps. Steps, one after the other. Glass objects, objects still intact, empty glasses. A glass that falls, three, two, one, zero. Glass partition, letters.

Movie Connections:

Featured in J'aime (2007)

A modernist classic

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...