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Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
I'm more of a genre guy than an avant gardist, but enough mentions of Alain Resnais' L'année dernière à Marienbad have cropped up recently (partly because of a new DVD from Criterion) that I finally gave it a shot last night. (Thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kdotdammit, who sent this to me in a trade for a copy of Desert Fury.) The thing that finally sealed it for me (as a genre guy) was this comment by Dave Kehr in his review of the DVD for the NYTimes:
For Mr. Resnais, a fan of comic books and genre fiction, the hotel in “Marienbad” belongs to a long line of Dark Old Houses, the archetypical setting for a certain kind of comic thriller that dates back at least to silent films like Roland West’s 1926 “Bat” and Paul Leni’s 1927 “Cat and the Canary” (and to the Broadway plays that inspired them).
“The Cat and the Canary,” with its elaborate dolly shots through spooky, shadowy corridors, seems like a direct inspiration, as do the opening scenes in Tod Browning’s “Dracula” (1931). The filmmaker Mark Rappaport has noted how Ms. Seyrig, with her slicked-back hair and flowing Chanel gowns, resembles the caped Bela Lugosi in Browning’s film. (And it was reportedly Mr. Resnais who urged the surpassingly elegant Ms. Seyrig to star in “Daughters of Darkness,” a lesbian vampire film in the Eurotrash tradition made by Harry Kümel in 1971.)
I've seen all the films mentioned there, including Daughters of Darkness (in which Ms. Seyrig plays the Countess Bathory, still alive in contemporary times), and I really love old dark house movies. The Cat and the Canary popped up in one of my recent movie-geeking posts. The Bat was one of the influences on the the Batman, too.
Anyway, I'm not going to say too much about this movie, because I've only watched it once. Read Kehr's review for an excellent, if brief, overview. What I will say is that I found it visually mesmerizing and astonishing (I think I said "holy shit" out loud several times), and for me it worked largely as a silent film. Which is to say that the verbal aspects are so abstract and opaque (the script was by Robbe-Grillet) that they were more like music than anything else, and my attention was focused on the imagery. Also, the visual style reminded me of the avant garde films of the '20s and '30s by Man Ray or Bunuel or Watson & Webber, and yes, the lighting and settings are often reminiscent of the old gothic movies of the '20s and '30s as well. There were some editing effects that really took my breath away, and I don't quite understand the trick. For example, they were able to match head motions in two completely different settings such that cutting from one to the other seemed like a natural succession even though almost all other visual information on the screen had changed in the cut.
I guess these techniques have been incorporated into advertising, amongst other things, long since. Okay, I have to quote more of Kehr's review, although I'm sure I'm shredding fair use by doing so:
Photographed in widescreen black and white by the great Sacha Vierny, “Marienbad” has a visual texture that has exerted an influence over everything from Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations to Ridley Scott’s commercials. One of the film’s biggest fans would appear to have been Stanley Kubrick, who dropped a spaceman down into one of the baroque bedchambers of “Marienbad” at the end of “2001” and spent much of “The Shining” trying to out-dolly Resnais through the corridors of a snowbound hotel populated by ghosts right out of the “Marienbad” party circuit. The line between high art and low is not always easy to draw. In the movies it is often impossible.
I have something of a bias against European art films of the '50s and '60s because I perceive them as trapped in dull middle class existential ennui (who me, paint with a broad brush?), but while the bourgeois characters in this movie are clearly trapped in a nightmare of some kind, I wasn't put off by it as I often am. The sheer visual energy and mystery kept me entranced. Are any of Resnais' other movies this good? Hiroshima, Mon Amour has always sounded like another total laugh riot. On the other hand, I've seen it argued that his 1968 time travel film, Je t'aime, je t'aime (the scenario of which sounds somewhat similar to John Crowley's short story, "Snow"), is the best science fiction film of 1968 (i.e., better than 2001).
Update: Nice comment by Robert Chatain on the discussion about this movie at Dave Kehr's blog: I think it’s important to note that Robbe-Grillet is writing abstract melodrama, not abstract realism. Throughout “Marienbad,” as in many of his novels, there’s a feeling that something bad has happened, might happen or will happen — this, and not its formal beauty, is what drives the film forward.
kdotdammit, who sent this to me in a trade for a copy of Desert Fury.) The thing that finally sealed it for me (as a genre guy) was this comment by Dave Kehr in his review of the DVD for the NYTimes:For Mr. Resnais, a fan of comic books and genre fiction, the hotel in “Marienbad” belongs to a long line of Dark Old Houses, the archetypical setting for a certain kind of comic thriller that dates back at least to silent films like Roland West’s 1926 “Bat” and Paul Leni’s 1927 “Cat and the Canary” (and to the Broadway plays that inspired them).
“The Cat and the Canary,” with its elaborate dolly shots through spooky, shadowy corridors, seems like a direct inspiration, as do the opening scenes in Tod Browning’s “Dracula” (1931). The filmmaker Mark Rappaport has noted how Ms. Seyrig, with her slicked-back hair and flowing Chanel gowns, resembles the caped Bela Lugosi in Browning’s film. (And it was reportedly Mr. Resnais who urged the surpassingly elegant Ms. Seyrig to star in “Daughters of Darkness,” a lesbian vampire film in the Eurotrash tradition made by Harry Kümel in 1971.)
I've seen all the films mentioned there, including Daughters of Darkness (in which Ms. Seyrig plays the Countess Bathory, still alive in contemporary times), and I really love old dark house movies. The Cat and the Canary popped up in one of my recent movie-geeking posts. The Bat was one of the influences on the the Batman, too.
Anyway, I'm not going to say too much about this movie, because I've only watched it once. Read Kehr's review for an excellent, if brief, overview. What I will say is that I found it visually mesmerizing and astonishing (I think I said "holy shit" out loud several times), and for me it worked largely as a silent film. Which is to say that the verbal aspects are so abstract and opaque (the script was by Robbe-Grillet) that they were more like music than anything else, and my attention was focused on the imagery. Also, the visual style reminded me of the avant garde films of the '20s and '30s by Man Ray or Bunuel or Watson & Webber, and yes, the lighting and settings are often reminiscent of the old gothic movies of the '20s and '30s as well. There were some editing effects that really took my breath away, and I don't quite understand the trick. For example, they were able to match head motions in two completely different settings such that cutting from one to the other seemed like a natural succession even though almost all other visual information on the screen had changed in the cut.
I guess these techniques have been incorporated into advertising, amongst other things, long since. Okay, I have to quote more of Kehr's review, although I'm sure I'm shredding fair use by doing so:
Photographed in widescreen black and white by the great Sacha Vierny, “Marienbad” has a visual texture that has exerted an influence over everything from Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations to Ridley Scott’s commercials. One of the film’s biggest fans would appear to have been Stanley Kubrick, who dropped a spaceman down into one of the baroque bedchambers of “Marienbad” at the end of “2001” and spent much of “The Shining” trying to out-dolly Resnais through the corridors of a snowbound hotel populated by ghosts right out of the “Marienbad” party circuit. The line between high art and low is not always easy to draw. In the movies it is often impossible.
I have something of a bias against European art films of the '50s and '60s because I perceive them as trapped in dull middle class existential ennui (who me, paint with a broad brush?), but while the bourgeois characters in this movie are clearly trapped in a nightmare of some kind, I wasn't put off by it as I often am. The sheer visual energy and mystery kept me entranced. Are any of Resnais' other movies this good? Hiroshima, Mon Amour has always sounded like another total laugh riot. On the other hand, I've seen it argued that his 1968 time travel film, Je t'aime, je t'aime (the scenario of which sounds somewhat similar to John Crowley's short story, "Snow"), is the best science fiction film of 1968 (i.e., better than 2001).
Update: Nice comment by Robert Chatain on the discussion about this movie at Dave Kehr's blog: I think it’s important to note that Robbe-Grillet is writing abstract melodrama, not abstract realism. Throughout “Marienbad,” as in many of his novels, there’s a feeling that something bad has happened, might happen or will happen — this, and not its formal beauty, is what drives the film forward.