Last Year at Marienbad
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Movie Reviews of Last Year at Marienbad
Movie Review: avant garde masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is the most radical, experimental and surreal film ever made to this day. Nothing done by any other filmmakers before or since compares to its violation of ordinary modes of cinema, and yet, it establishes its own reality which is perfectly understandable, once one is mesmerized by its beauty. It is easy to do so, as the film is shot with an immaculately clean and smooth black and white style in an enormous and picturesque resort, with the most elegant and beautiful french actors of the day.
However, the film is far more than picturesque. The writer, Robbe-Grillet, is one of the greatest innovators of 20th century literature and cinema. He stated in the introduction to the published version of the script that his desire was not to confuse the viewer, but to present something closer to what one actually experiences in everyday life than what is given in ordinary storytelling - a combination of present experience, past memories, and future anticipations, all of which are equally important because in the mind, they are so. One does not live life like a storybook - one lives it within the universe of human consciousness, which is exceedingly difficult and complex to record. This is one of the few films to attempt just that.
This DVD is an excellent quality transfer, and the subtitles can be turned off if you want to see the entire screen-image.
Movie Review: HOME-WORK
Summary: 5 Stars
Golden Lion at the 1961 Venice Film Festival, director Alain Resnais's LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD is undoubtedly a milestone in Movie History. With a screenplay written by Alain Resnais and by Alain Robbe-Grillet, one of the popes of the New Novel movement, this movie was doomed to fly high above our poor heads.In LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, the characters act like zombies, speak like zombies and walk like zombies. Unfortunately, George Romero wasn't directing. So we are left to suppose that the authors wanted to create uneasiness in the average movie lover's mind. And believe me or not, if you have the curiosity to take a look at this movie, you surely will be puzzled by the result.
Let's admit that you haven't fallen asleep after half an hour ; you will be hypnotized by the monotonous voices of the two heroes caught in a the trap of a torrid (!) love story, by the gloomy baroque hotel haunted by strange creatures such as Sacha Pitoëff, a kind of John Carradine clone. At the end of the film, you will have the feeling that the whole story wasn't no more than the dream of a fool.
But, and that's the ultimate pleasure, you will feel so proud that you will shout to the world's face : I did it ! I've watched LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD until its end ! Without sleeping.
A DVD for your schoolteacher's library.
Movie Review: "WALLPAPER - but WHAT wallpaper!"
Summary: 5 Stars
Some or other erudite wag referred to this still unsurpassed inspiration to all serious minded film scholars as "The World's Longest Wallpaper Commercial", Ah, but WHAT a commercial......Is it a love story? Is it a murder mystery? Just what the Hell is this all about? Like fading memories - when we remember incidents, moments, etc., we tend - depending on visual power - to recollect - to remember specifics about the immediate surroundings, the rest? That's not quite a blurr, the other images are there, but what are THEY doing? Probably an inspiration for the later disappointing Kubrick "Eyes Wide Shut" orgy sequences, THAT chauteau, somewhere outside New York - err London? Anyhow, THIS is where we are - in someone's memory - recalling specific episodes over and over again. Somewhat frustrating, somewhat disturbing, but not disappointing, and this should be viewed again and again, you see - there's ALWAYS something new to be discovered. [A similar approach used in the later "Providence"].
Luminous Delphine Seyrig is the focal Female! [She left us with very few movie - this is one of her best].
Strange piece of work indeed! It has a life of it's own - and seems to recreate itself. ANOTHER MUST SEE? "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" - similar, unforgettable opening sequence!
Movie Review: Great Formalist Film!
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is not for some people. There are plenty of reviews here from "plain old regular folk" who are perfectly willing to "tell it like it is," about how this movie is, "just a bunch of artsy fartsy people talkin' French." According to these "reviewers" folksy mentalities, anything that they don't understand must be bad. No effort is really spent trying to understand it (after all, why should they try to use their brains, right?)- and in the case of this film, that effort would have earned dividends.
This is a fantastic movie, a cornucopia of film techniques all jammed into one perfect film. I'm a film student at NYU, and a huge fan of classic films. This doesn't really qualify me for anything other than to say that I do spend time thinking about film, and this film in particular. I don't think that everyone will like this film- or that everyone SHOULD like this film. However, if you dislike the film, at least be sure you understand it before you go around trashing it. Otherwise you're really only discrediting yourself, and possibly scaring people away from a movie that they very well may enjoy.
Movie Review: Did They or Didn't They
Summary: 5 Stars
Last Year at Marienbad is a classic of the French New Wave and was one of the most influential films of the 1960s. Director Alain Resnais has given us a puzzle film that is impossible to understand. It is just as impossible to not be caught up the lyrical mythical qualities of this film.On the surface this is a story of a man who believes that he had an affair with a woman the previous year although she denies it. But this is also an unsurpassed tale of pure filmmaking.
Resnais is addressing the idea of how we percieve movies and making a direct confrontation with traditional Hollywood filmmaking. He is perhaps also making points about memory. It is also possible that he is making points about ourselves.
This is only a film for the sophisticated viewer and every film fan or historian should own it. Why own? Because you'll need to see it dozens of times. That a film that is unknowable could also be suspenseful and addicting is part of it's power.
There is not a misstep in the entire movie and I am truly thankful that such a wonderful movie is out on DVD. Buy it.