I remember watching this French New Wave classic in film school, being oddly fascinated by it even though we watched many other similarly slow-going movies that were anything but mesmerizing. The movie had the same effect on art-house crowds back in the early 1960s. Critics all over the world either tried to analyze what’s going on in the film or simply decided that there was no need for analysis; as in the case of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Last Year at Marienbad became the ultimate trip.
Intentionally confusing audiences
The movie has no real story, and few facts to agree on, but let’s try to at least set the scene. Events take place in spectacular surroundings as the film was shot at several palaces and their grounds in Germany, intentionally confusing audiences as to where the characters are. The year is not explicitly stated, but the story should play out in the late 1920s or early ’30s. Men and women in fashionable clothes mingle at a social gathering and a man, X (Giorgio Albertazzi), confronts a beautiful woman, A (Delphine Seyrig), certain of the fact that he met her last year at Marienbad.
Or was it Frederiksbad? She tells him, no, it’s impossible. But X insists and starts providing her details of their encounter, but his story has flaws, which makes A even more doubtful. But how can she not remember that they connected passionately even though she was married?
Understanding the film’s writer
There are as many theories and thoughts regarding this picture as there are people who’ve seen it. The project united a talented filmmaker who had two prominent movies behind him (a Holocaust documentary short and New Wave staple Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959)) and a novelist who had broken new ground as a prominent “nouveau roman” figure. Not that I want to take away anyone’s pleasure of coming up with clever new ideas of what this movie is about, but the key to understanding Last Year at Marienbad probably lies in understanding the film’s writer, Alain Robbe-Grillet. The “nouveau roman” genre focused on the details of the world, not the plot or the characters, which fitted very nicely into the view of New Wave filmmakers who wanted to break free from the tyranny of having to tell predictable stories in linear fashion.
Robbe-Grillet’s books often deal with psychology and memory, providing details and repetitions that help expose the nature of his characters. That’s also what he’s trying to do in his script for this film, and together with the editors and cinematographer, Resnais turns Robbe-Grillet’s concept into haunting visuals that sometimes caress our minds, often put an abrupt spin on various situations.
It’s precisely like a dream. That’s one of the most persistent, and valid, theories on the film. In Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010) they talk about how dreams work, but Resnais and his collaborators show us exactly what they look like. Dreams start in the middle of a story, we don’t quite know where we are or how we got there, facts are jumbled, repetition is common and it’s very emotional even though we don’t always fully grasp why. Sacha Vierny’s camera highlights details that may matter only to the dreamer. One thing is certain – no one ever cared what did happen last year at Marienbad.
Last Year at Marienbad 1961-France-Italy. 93 min. B/W. Widescreen. Produced by Pierre Courau, Raymond Froment. Directed by Alain Resnais. Screenplay: Alain Robbe-Grillet. Cinematography: Sacha Vierny. Music: Francis Seyrig. Editing: Jasmine Chasney, Henri Colpi. Cast: Delphine Seyrig (A), Giorgio Albertazzi (X), Sacha Pitoeff (M).
Trivia: Original title: L’année demière à Marienbad.
Venice:Â Golden Lion.
Last word: “Resnais’s producer asked me to write a script for him. Resnais himself wanted to make a film with Françoise Sagan, so he was not interested, but the producer said perhaps I could persuade him. I immediately wrote three synopses, two pages each, and handed them over to Resnais. He liked them and said, “go ahead.” It didn’t cost him anything since the producer had agreed to pay me without any commitment on Resnais’s part. I produced not a scenario but a finished script: shot by shot, frame by frame, with all the camera movements, and ready to shoot. It is rare that a director would accept such a script, but Resnais did, and the film was done in two months.” (Robbe-Grillet, The Paris Review)
