09 Dec Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

Annotated Image — Constructed Memory

One of the most influential films ever made, and must be seen on that basis. You create your own life by collecting Borgean memories and adding pieces from this film will greatly enrich your viewing of later, safer films along the same line. Films in a narrative sense like: ‘Fight Club,’ ’Thirteenth Floor,’ ‘Existenz,’’Last Action Hero,’ ‘Matrix,’’Dark City,’ ‘Bladerunner,’’Purple Rose,’ “Memento”… lots of others where reality is partially fiction created by the characters. Films like Kubrick’s where the vision IS the narrative.

And of course the films of Greenaway which extend and elaborate the notion with much greater skill (using the same cinematographer).

Well before these ideas appeared in this film, they influenced the novel as well, primarily through Nabokov, so a real trip would be to see this, then Kubrick’s ‘Lolita’ then ’Throw Momma from the Train,’ which was based on Nabokov’s most cinematic novel, “Pale Fire,” (which uses the same device of self-invention).

The screenplay is perfect. The visuals are so apt, every film afterwards changes. My complaints are with the sound. The physical acting is good, but the voices are in a weaselly timbre. Sean Penn and Kate Winslet (or Cate Blanchett) should dub it, as they know how to use their voices to create real and fictitious characters simultaneously.

And the score! Really bad, so bad that if you see ‘Carnival of Souls’ at any time before of after seeing this, the whole film is ruined.’Carnival’ took the editing, soundtrack and narrative stance of this film and blended it with images from German surrealism. Utterly artless and derivative — virtually identical organ music.

The DVD video translation is poor. Many compression artefacts. See it on a screen if you can.

Posted in 2001

Ted’s Evaluation — 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.

IMDB