IMDb > La jetée (1962)
La jetée
Quicklinks
Top Links
trailers and videosfull cast and crewtriviaofficial sitesmemorable quotes
Overview
main detailscombined detailsfull cast and crewcompany creditstv schedule
Awards & Reviews
user commentsexternal reviewsnewsgroup reviewsawardsuser ratingsparents guiderecommendationsmessage board
Plot & Quotes
plot summarysynopsisplot keywordsAmazon.com summarymemorable quotes
Fun Stuff
triviagoofssoundtrack listingcrazy creditsalternate versionsmovie connectionsFAQ
Other Info
merchandising linksbox office/businessrelease datesfilming locationstechnical specslaserdisc detailsDVD detailsliterature listingsNewsDesk
Promotional
taglines trailers and videos posters photo gallery
External Links
showtimesofficial sitesmiscellaneousphotographssound clipsvideo clips

La jetée (1962) More at IMDbPro »


Overview

User Rating:
8.3/10   6,919 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Down 2% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:
Writer:
Chris Marker (screenplay)
Contact:
View company contact information for The Pier on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
16 February 1962 (France) more
Genre:
Plot:
In a devastated Paris in the aftermath of WWIII, The few surviving humans begin researching time travel... more | add synopsis
Awards:
1 win more
User Comments:
The most heartbreakingly despairingly romantic science fiction film ever made. more (76 total)

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)
Jean Négroni ... Narrator (voice)
Hélène Chatelain ... The Woman
Davos Hanich ... The Man
Jacques Ledoux ... The Experimenter
André Heinrich
Jacques Branchu
Pierre Joffroy
Étienne Becker
Philbert von Lifchitz
Ligia Branice ... A woman from the future (as Ligia Borowczyk)
Janine Klein ... A woman from the future
William Klein ... A man from the future (as Bill Klein)
Germano Facetti (as Germano Faccetti)
more
Create a character page for: ?

Additional Details

Also Known As:
The Pier (International: English title)
more
Runtime:
28 min
Country:
Language:
Aspect Ratio:
1.66 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Company:

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
Comprised entirely of still shot photography, except for a shot of the woman opening and blinking her eyes. more
Quotes:
Narrator: They begin again. The man doesn't die, nor does he go mad. He suffers. They continue. more
Movie Connections:
Referenced in Sans soleil (1983) more

FAQ

This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.
57 out of 71 people found the following comment useful.
The most heartbreakingly despairingly romantic science fiction film ever made., 31 October 2000
10/10
Author: Alice Liddel (-darragh@excite.com) from dublin, ireland

'La Jetee' is a film about movement made up entirely of photographic stills. Well, not entirely. For one transcendent moment the photo moves, ironically at the film's stillest moment, as a woman we have starred at sleeping in the sunny dawn wakes up. It is typical of Marker that a film spanning centuries, millenia, war, torture, experimentation, murder, dreams, time travel, destruction, love, joy, should have as its epiphanical moment an elusive, delusive moment of utter calm, that of a sleeping woman opening her eyes. In a film whose body is the stuff dreams are made on, such a moment is truly cataclysmic.

Like all Marker's masterpieces, 'Jetee', ostensibly a work of science-fiction, is profoundly concerned with Time, Memory and History. Such abstracts treated in lesser hands have a tendency to become vague, airy, removed from life; but Marker, the old leftist, always grounds his philosophy, humanisises and politicises it.

'Jetee', though a short, is rich with ambiguity and irony - the freedom of dreams, to reinvent the past, to escape from circumstances, is exploited by a totalitarian oligarchy, and ultimately fatal for the dreamer. Such is our desperate need to dream, to escape, forget/reinvent, that it is easy to forget that the Man's relationship with the Woman is a phantom, an entire history blown out of a brief glimpse, like that Baudelaire poem where he is stunned by a brief glimpse of a woman he never sees again.

It is this act the tyrants need, this gesture of recreation - by embodying what never happened, by making real or factual what is ultimately desire, he has destroyed history; this paves the way for the vision of 3000, where history is destroyed, and along with it humanity; a Houhnyhm-land of disembodied intelligence. This idea of the death of history, of the victory of post-modernity, would be most eloquently in Marker's chef d'oeuvre, 'Sans Soleil', which was shown with this film at the screening I attended.

But Marker's great achievement here is his creation of the future as a regression, as a descent into medievalism, part-Les Miserables, part-Occupation, with all the signs of French progress and pretension destroyed, with all Haussman's modernity and prosperity run to earth by nuclear contamination, the survivors living in sewers with rats, as their ancestors once did.

Marker's vision is terrifying in its mixture of ruined symmetry and a sickening moral blackness, the general silence punctuated by impenetrable whispers and noises - this is one of the most frightening soundtracks I've ever heard. This medievalism also means a bypassing of the intellect, of literal Enlightenment, and back to a kind of spiritual murk, with pastiche sacred music flooding the film, and parodies of religious kitsch obtruding (the godlike light seeping into dense interiors; religious slogans; the compositions of survivors like beatified saints) on the relics of civilisation, the graffiti, the now-impenetrable codes.

This chaos is contrasted with the Paris of the dream, especially in the museum scene, even more chilling with its statues looking like petrified relics from a volcanic disaster; the mute, stuffed animals warning humans of their fate; the exquisite composition of architecture, trapping the couple in a web of order, boxes, classification, obsolescence, the doomed attempts by mankind to order the universe.

yet this dream is so moving because it offers love, connection, gardens, talk, dreams, Paris, even if they are illusory. because, although this is a dense, difficult, allusive, modern film, it also illuminates a simple, ancient truth 'In the midst of life, we are in death'. As Morrissey once responded, 'Etcetera'.

Was the above comment useful to you?
more (76 total)

Message Boards

Discuss this movie with other users on IMDb message board for La jetée (1962)
Recent Posts (updated daily)User
better than 12 Monkeys Dr_Mambo
music mike-crowley1
Some explanations of La Jetee cinematographe
Rip-off picrad-1
Does anyone else think... mustard_monkey
Interpretation...(Spo ilers) ICON324
more

Recommendations

If you enjoyed this title, our database also recommends:
- - - - -
Colloque de chiens Professione: reporter La guerre est finie Persepolis
IMDb User Rating:
IMDb User Rating:
IMDb User Rating:
IMDb User Rating:
IMDb User Rating:
Show more recommendations

Related Links

Full cast and crew Company credits External reviews
IMDb Short section IMDb France section Add this title to MyMovies

You may report errors and omissions on this page to the IMDb database managers. They will be examined and if approved will be included in a future update. Clicking the 'Update' button will take you through a step-by-step process.