LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD

Variously pilloried and adulated in its time, and undeniably “one of the most influential movies ever made” [J. Hoberman, The Village Voice], Alain Resnais’s coolly glittering, fascinating, frustrating film, made in collaboration with novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, lays its scene at a hotel located in a baroque château. A man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) meet; he claims they had an affair a year ago; she has no memory of him; a third man (Sacha Pitoëff), who may or may not be the woman’s husband, intervenes only to further muddy the waters. A film of absolute ambiguity in both content and style, marked by abrupt shifts in timeframe and location, untrustworthy narration, and disconcerting editing patterns, and a work that has lured in generations of viewers hoping either to unlock its mysteries or simply relish in its solemn, seductive beauty.

“Shot by Sacha Vierny in otherworldly black-and-white ‘Scope, it oscillates ambiguously between past, present, and various conditional tenses, mixing memory and fantasy, fear and desire. The overall tone is poker-faced parody of lush Hollywood melodrama, yet the film’s dreamlike cadences, frozen tableaux, and distilled surrealist poetry are too eerie, too terrifying even, to be shaken off as camp. For all its notoriety, this masterpiece among masterpieces has never really received its due.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum