 Still from "L'année dernière à Marienbad" L'année dernière à Marienbad (translated as Last Year in Marienbad in the UK and Last Year at Marienbad in North America) is a 1961 French movie directed by Alain Resnais, starring Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoëff. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (496x689, 84 KB)Last Year at Marienbad film poster This image is of a movie poster, and the copyright for it is most likely owned by either the publisher of the movie or the studio which produced the movie in question. ...
Alain Resnais (born June 3, 1922 in Vannes, France) is a French film director, and a key founder of the french new wave or nouvelle vague film movement. ...
Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 18, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer. ...
Alain Robbe-Grillet Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-) is a French writer and filmmaker, born in Brest, Finistère, France into a family of engineers and scientists. ...
Delphine Seyrig (April 10, 1932 - October 15, 1990) was a stage and film actress and a film director. ...
Sacha Vierny (10 August 1919 – 15 May 2001) was a French cinematographer. ...
Henri Colpi won the palme dor at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival for the Luis Bunuel-directed film Viridiana(1961). ...
June 25 is the 176th day of the year (177th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 189 days remaining. ...
1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1961 calendar). ...
Image File history File links Last_year_marienbad. ...
Image File history File links Last_year_marienbad. ...
1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1961 calendar). ...
Film is a term that encompasses motion pictures as individual projects, as well as the field in general. ...
Alain Resnais (born June 3, 1922 in Vannes, France) is a French film director, and a key founder of the french new wave or nouvelle vague film movement. ...
Delphine Seyrig (April 10, 1932 - October 15, 1990) was a stage and film actress and a film director. ...
It is famous for its enigmatic narrative structure, in which truth and fiction are difficult to distinguish, and the exact temporal and spatial relationship of the events is open to question. The oneiric nature of the film has fascinated and baffled audiences and critics, some hailing it as a masterpiece, whilst others find it incomprehensible.
Plot
To say the film has a plot is not quite accurate. It depicts the repetitive, almost mathmatical interactions of three characters and even at the end of the film, few plot-related questions have been answered. Only the relationship of the three central characters, who remain nameless, is firm.
A man (Man A) approaches a woman (Woman) at some indefinite chateau and asks "Didn't we meet at Marienbad last year?" the woman is non-commital and demure. "Didn't you say you would leave your husband and we would run away together?" he asks. Again, a very specific question has been raised, and although the woman says "No," they continue to talk as if they perhaps had indeed made plans. When a 2nd man (Man B), who may be "Woman's" husband approaches, the conversation ends somewhat awkwardly and the characters move on.
First time viewers (at this early point in the film) may still feel they should be looking for narrative clues so they can resolve the film from the standpoint of plot, and that the film will ultimately supply some "meaning." It soon becomes apparent that this is not the key to understanding what is being presented to you.
The film puts several motifs like this in play and begins to repeat them. The dialogues happen inside and outdoors on the grounds of the chateau.
- Society is depicted in the form of priveleged others, often shown in black tie.
- A play which is mimetic of the structural relationship of the three characters is observed.
- The men at the chateau are seen passing the time with various games (Nim, target-shooting)
- Tracking shots of the chateau corridors are shown with ambiguous voiceover
The pieces repeat and sometimes occur indoor, sometimes outdoor. Edits occur which suggest that these events are repeated into the infinite.
Meaning That's the big question, isn't it? What does it mean? The film's deliberate ambiguity asks viewers for more engagement than they typically give; to provide a scenario that explains what is being offered (or less engagement if you choose, as a vocal audience who hates the film, insist that it is simply vacuous). The normal constraints of a passive audience being guided with explicit meaning provided in dialogue that clarifies, and a classical narrative structure are undermined.
Author Robbe-Grillet was a structuralist thinker, a French philosophical group that believed (among other things) that the key to social relationships is the network of structural relationships in place in society. That enormous framework and it's related appellations (brother, doctor, wife, etc.) is of more value in understanding society; and provides more meaning than the usual places we seek and derive meaning from.
Interested viewers can find numerous proposals or readings of the film elsewhere on the internet.
Filmic Effects Perhaps the most disquieting single image a viewer retains from the movie is that of figures in a geometric formal garden. At a dramatic moment in the film, two characters (and the camera) rush out of the chateau and are faced with a tableau of figures arranged in a static garden; although the people cast long dramatic shadows, the gardens themselves do not. The oneric quality of this image is reminiscent of the works of Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, Yves Tanguy and Paul Delvaux. Pieta or Revolution by Night 1923 Max Ernst (April 2, 1891 – April 1, 1976) was a German artist. ...
Giorgio de Chirico in 1936 photographed by Carl Van Vechten. ...
Indefinite Divisibility 1942 Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy (January 5, 1900 – January 15, 1955) was a surrealist painter. ...
Paul Delvaux was a Belgian painter, famous for his surrealist paintings with female nudes staring at the horizon. ...
- The shadows/no-shadows shot was created by painting the shadows of the figure on the ground.
- Multiple chateaus and their grounds were edited together to produce a filmic space without any concrete limits.
- The film has one or two remarkable match shots.
Influences The film was inspired by the 1940 novel The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares.[citation needed] The Invention of Morel (sometimes translated as Morels Invention) is a 1940 novel by Argentine fiction writer Adolfo Bioy Casares. ...
Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 18, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer. ...
The film has influenced (at least the look) of:
- TV commercials for Calvin Kleins Obsession (late 1980's)
- The New Order music video "World," which is created with just four long-takes.
Miscellaneous In some of the movie's most memorable sequences, characters engage in a version of the game Nim. Nim is a two-player mathematical game of strategy in which players take turns removing objects from distinct heaps. ...
Marienbad (Mariánské Lázně) is a town in the Czech Republic. The film's setting is unclear (although almost certainly not Marienbad), but was actually filmed at the Nymphenburg Palace, Munich, Germany. Mariánské LáznÄ› (German: Marienbad) is a spa town in the Carlsbad Region of the Czech Republic. ...
View from the Park Schloss Nymphenburg, around 1760, as painted by Canaletto. ...
Munich: Frauenkirche and Town Hall steeple Munich (German: München, (pronounced listen) is the capital of the German Federal State of Bavaria (German: Freistaat Bayern). ...
Awards and legacy The film was nominated for the 1963 Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay (Alain Robbe-Grillet), and it won the Golden Lion at the 1961 Venice Film Festival. In 1963 Adonis Kyrou declared the film a total triumph in his influential Le Surréalisme au Cinéma (p.206), recognizing the ambiguous environment and obscure motives within the film as representing many of the concerns of Surrealism in narrative cinema. 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (the link is to a full 1963 calendar). ...
The Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay is the Academy Award for the best script not based upon previously published material. ...
Alain Robbe-Grillet Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-) is a French writer and filmmaker, born in Brest, Finistère, France into a family of engineers and scientists. ...
The Golden Lion (it: Leone dOro) is the name of the highest prize given to a film at the Biennale Venice Film Festival. ...
The Venice Film Festival (it: Mostra Internazionale dArte Cinematografica) is the oldest Film Festival in the World (began in the 1932) and takes place every year in late August/early September on the Lido di Venezia in the historic Palazzo del Cinema on the Lungomare Marconi, in Venice, Italy. ...
Adonis Kyrou (1923 - 1985) was born in Greece. ...
Surrealism[1] is a movement stating that the liberation of our mind, and subsequently the liberation of the individual self and society, can be achieved by exercising the imaginative faculties of the unconscious mind to the attainment of a dream-like state different from, or ultimately ‘truer’ than, everyday reality. ...
The cinematographic influence of this film is enormous: it has entered the visual language of popular culture, and audiences are now unwittingly aware of the film prior to viewing it. As well as influencing films, it has had an enormous influence on the evolution of music videos. One of the most obvious examples is the video for "To the End" by the British rock band Blur, which includes scenes echoing those found in the film. A music video (also video clip, promo) is a short film or video meant to present a visual representation of a popular music song. ...
To the End is a song by British rock band Blur and is featured on their third album, Parklife. ...
Cover of Blur: The Best Of - Clockwise from top left: Coxon, James, Rowntree, Albarn Blur is the name of a British rock band. ...
See also Cutting on Action refers to cutting from one shot to another view that matches it in action and gives the impression of a continuous time span. ...
Further reading - Ado Kyrou Le Surréalisme au Cinéma, (not located): Le Terrain Vague, 1963
- Jean-Louis Leutrat, L'Année dernière à Marienbad, London: British Film Institute, 2000
External links
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