User reviews

"Last Year at Marienbad" (1961) Dir.: Alain Resnais

When it comes to cinema, I'm neither a philistine nor a scholar. I'm happy to read into a film's artistic context in preparation for watching it, but it must be self-evident, and not reliant upon anything but its own merit and communicability to be considered a success. In practice, this means I will certainly read the hype, but I won't necessarily believe it. And it's a good job, because "Last Year at Marienbad" remains one of the most hyped, discussed and debated movies of all time. People disagree over virtually everything about it - the pace, the narrative structure, the individual performances, the pretense, even the plot points. Yes, that's right, after forty-eight years people still argue over what actually happens in this film, let alone what it all means and how successfully it is presented to us. So I decided to ignore the minefields of audience opinion (which is largely positive anyway, if wildly diverse) and dive in without fuss, volunteering to watch this movie from the 'philistine' end of the spectrum and if I didn't like it, screw it. It's only one film anyway.

When it became clear what I was watching, and how many traditional storytelling criteria were obviously not going to be fulfilled by "...Marienbad", I felt like I had burst in to the film's aristocratic country retreat wearing torn jeans and waving a bottle of tequila around, but ended up having an awesome time in a completely unexpected way. Make no mistake, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It is a near-perfect realisation of a very, very dense and ambitious concept, and Resnais should be proud that he and his film-making team were able to make it. It is stately, baffling, elegant, sinister and brilliant.

Not that I could tell you what it's actually about, of course. Most people seem to think it's about the tricks and subjective nature of the memory, and the inherent flaws in how we cross-reference events with other events over time. These broad, elemental themes are the only ones I feel sure enough about to include in this review, which is illustrative of "Last Year at Marienbad"s disorienting effect. We are taken on an endless stroll through the rooms and corridors of a cold, strange country manor where the upper classes take their holidays and engage in card games and theatre. Their discussions are empty and meaningless, yet they go on forever. Time is not present in a recognisable form as the unnamed narrator loses track of how long he has been there, and how long he has attempted to persuade the unnamed woman that they met before, and that she had promised to run away with him. "Wait for one year," she'd supposedly said. "Next year I will leave with you." But the woman has no memory of him or her promise. She appears to be married to another man, who is tall, dour and imposing. Despite this, she keeps the unnamed narrator at arm's length, drawing him in and then pushing him back as if she does indeed remember something of him but is unwilling to accept it. His struggle to awaken some kind of acknowledgement of their shared past is the premise of the film.

"Last Year at Marienbad" is a bizarre maze of half-recollections and inaccuracies, where words and events are repeated several times in different situations and everything we see is very possibly on an endless loop, eventually folding in on itself and collapsing into a kind of incomprehensible singularity. We have no frames of reference for what we are seeing other than what has already been seen, and we are never to know what's 'now' and what's a memory because the characters cross over between the two. As a result I found myself trying to draw a line between reality and false memory up to about half way through the film, after which I abandoned it as a futile exercise. This is one of its key strengths - it demands so much of the viewer that we are forced to build a structure for it in our own heads, and our efforts are routinely dashed.

This all sounds terribly oblique and ridiculous, and in a sense it is; its detractors have regularly labelled it as such and that's a valid conclusion to reach. But it is spectacular on the eye, and this carried my attention right through the difficulties and to the end of the movie without so much as a pause. The camera sweeps down hallways and bursts out across garden terraces without even a jolt, it literally dances its way through the film as if it were another character. There are odd touches, too, that contribute to the striking atmosphere of the film, like Resnais' decision to have his supporting actors and extras remain completely static until they are speaking or in the company of the main three characters. He also skillfully breaks the pace by accelerating towards several shuddering climaxes in the last half of the film, which renew the viewer's attention and string us further along towards an ending that we hope will allow us something more definite to grasp.

Whether it does or not, I will withhold. It's one of the many reasons to watch this film. But beware, it is genuinely challenging viewing – and in fact, its esotericism is the only reason I won't rate this higher than I have.

Years come and go, but "Marienbad" seems to remain the same--intriguing, challenging, stimulating, and moving. Alain Resnais' classic emerges as a timeless work, with a memorable score (utilizing unique pipe organ music) by Francis Seyrig and striking photography by Sacha Vierny. Delphine Seyrig and Giorgio Albertazzi play out their "roles" amidst dark corridors, empty halls, baroque statuary and geometric gardens. Time seems to stand still in the world of Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet, as our rapt attention is focused on its distinctive unfoldment. The meaning seems to be in the work and the solution in the problem. We simply take it in and allow it to speak for itself.

"Marienbad" is one of those films which requires a full- size widescreen and an excellent print to weave its haunting magic. It's a one-of-a-kind film experience, and one to which one can return again and again to enjoy as a mystery, romance or meditation.

This mysterious film shows us a man and a woman in an extravagant and capacious hotel. The man insists that he had an affair with the lady last year in Marienbad (or was it somewhere else?) The woman denies it, and just wants the man to leave her alone. Perhaps the man did meet her, perhaps he didn't. Resnais puts the pieces there and lets us take what we can from it.

The beautiful looking establishment, complete with gardens of splendour, is an eerie setting for the film. The guests seem like they are in a trance most of the time. A card game is shown where a man cannot be beaten, he claims. The cinematography is brilliant. Dark, then white, giving a blinking effect at times; and constantly switching between different locations. The music throughout the film sounds like it's from an old church organ. I can understand why this film will put off some people, because it doesn't explain much, and does meander at a pedestrian pace. But approached in the right mood, and watched in a dark room, this is a film to appreciate. Peter Greenaway thinks so; the film was influential in the making of The Draughtsman's Contract, and is (supposedly) the film Greenaway most admires.

It's useless to speculate on the "real" meaning of this dream-like movie that is an investigation on the mechanics of memory, and has the absolutely unique feature of allowing as many interpretations as there have been viewers since it opened to change cinematic grammar, decades ago. I've seen it 4 or 5 times over a span of some 25 years and still find it sumptuously directed, endlessly fascinating, eerie, one of my favorite movies of all time, and above all, an O-R-I-G-I-N-A-L !! Every movie ever made since "Marienbad" has a direct or indirect debt to it, as it abandoned (and subverted) objective story-telling tradition and entered the realm of total subjectivity, challenging movie audiences' intelligence, attention and perception. Of course, it's not meant for viewers who associate movies with light entertainment, though anyone who's ever wondered about his/her own mnemonic idiosyncrasies -- the diffuse, random, inaccurate way we recall facts and sometimes even mix them with imagined stuff -- surely COULD relate to this masterpiece.

There has been many conjectures as to the subject and the plot. Well, if you want a good hint, let me give you a precious one: read the novella "La Jalousie" (Jealousy, 1957), by Alain Robbe-Grillet, who is also the screenwriter of "Marienbad". "La Jalousie" is the thematic and "ideological" inspiration for "Marienbad".

Robbe-Grillet (one of the top names of the French "Nouveau Roman" movement along with Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Michel Butor, etc), was a former agronomist/ mathematician (and his writing shows it) who became a writer/filmmaker with a very personal, geometrical, unemotional, descriptive style. The novella "La Jalousie", like most Nouveau Roman books, is essentially cinematic in their approach of characters and plot, functioning like a film camera, a non-opinionated unobtrusive observer, but insightfully revealing in its "detachment".

His novella "La Jalousie" is a fascinating, maze-like circular construction, in which beginning and end mingle many times over, each time from a different perspective, just like observing a house or a sculpture from different angles one at a time -- which means each angle is only partially accurate, revealing but a portion of the truth, while hiding another. The "observer/narrator" in the book (the husband, but written in the third person - "he") tries to locate in PLACE and TIME the precise moment in which the feeling of jealousy arises in him as he tries to find the extent of his wife's relationship with another man (a.k.a. the threesome in the film). Did an affair really happen? Is it yet going to happen? Or is it his imagination, his suspicion, just his jealous feeling? (btw, this is the same theme as Proust's incomparable masterpiece "La Prisonnière", treated in antipodal, totally psychological, but equally obsessive style).

As in most "Nouveau Roman" novels, the notion of TIME in "La Jalousie" (and also in "Marienbad") is transformed and deformed; the approach of the characters is non-psychological, meaning that thoughts and outbursts of emotion are not dealt with, only the description of places, words, gestures and actions. Everything (even a very strong feeling like the birth of jealousy) is apprehended only through the observation of external facts: small gestures, the position of a chair or a table, a glass found full or empty, an unexpected sound, the way the woman combs her hair or looks at herself in the mirror, a suddenly unusual way of getting up or sitting down which leads to the husband's perception that something has suddenly, dangerously, definitely changed.

Well, it made very much sense to me that language-experimentalist book-worm Alain Resnais (think of all of his movies which were based on literature) and his fascination with memory and the brain (think "Hiroshima Mon Amour", "Je t'Aime Je t'Aime" and "Mon Oncle d'Amérique") should venture in constructing this film in visual terms using the geometrical structure of the novel (hence the breathtaking serpentine camera movements), with no beginning or end, respecting its "external", non-psychological, non-motivational approach of the characters and the plot, never condescending to "explanations".

See the film and read the book! I'm sure that, if you've liked (or been baffled by) the film on a first viewing, you'll have many insights on a second viewing of this absorbing, totally fascinating movie after reading the book on which it is structurally/esthetically based. While it's not essential to do so, it could be kind of a bonus! What else can I say? A definitive, revolutionary, undisputed film classic - 10/10

The title of Dali's best known work is an apt description of this film. A man meets a woman at a European spa and tries to convince her (and himself) that they met one year ago. While the plot is simple, its presentation is not. I first saw L'annee derniere a Marienbad while taking a French Film class in college. Of the dozen or so films we watched, Marienbad has stayed with me the longest. The nameless protagonist's memories repeat, sometimes minutely changed, sometimes not. The same organ motifs echo again and again, all against the backdrop of elegant hallways and sitting rooms. Through all this, the man attempts to spirit the woman away from her husband/companion, while at the same time establish once and for all what happened last year and what did not. More than any other film, Marienbad has shown me the difference between American film conventions and what else is possible. While so many American releases are rigidly plot driven, Marienbad uses film as a tool for exploration and introspection. Instead of linear story telling, director Resnais allows his characters to explore the details of what may be memory or just imagination. Against a detached, almost stoical background of extras and cool interiors, Delphin Seyrig and Giorgio Albertazzi display a sharp contrast of passion, pleading, and denial. I agree with a previous reviewer that much of the look of Marienbad has been appropriated by commercials for perfume; however, if you haven't seen this film before, you most likely have never seen anything quite so surreal.

It would take a braver person than me to delineate what LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD is `about', but as it is such an entirely thought provoking film, perhaps some sort of `meaning' can come from sharing these thoughts about it. Many people define it as cerebral and classical, but to me it is romantic and gothic. What is remarkable about the setting and the characters is that they are all so wealthy that they can rise above the concerns of ordinary mortals, only to find that this advantaged life brings other problems - of identity, purpose and values. They are strangely existentialist - the existentialism of great wealth - their small talk is intelligent, informed and stilted; they are all beautiful in the sense that money can partly buy beauty, and yet, in the process, they have lost human warmth, real sexual desire, and any purpose in life other than to drift on in their station in life. But desire is a respecter of nobody, and it is this element of human nature that haunts the corridors of the hotel like an invisible mist, and subconsciously their acutely civilised life-style which has bereaved them of something they no longer acknowledge or recognise and have deeply repressed - only to find it lingers on the fringes, confusing and disturbing them - spoiling everything; a depressive dissatisfaction. There is no joy, no enjoyment. The gardens become symbols of this desire to enslave, conquer and exile nature - formal, rigid and planned, and yet within the hotel, all around are decorative symbols of the chaotic and random aspects of nature. Everything appears to carry a symbol that needs to be interpreted - if it is there, it must have meaning, and if the Man says that they had arranged to elope together when they were at Marienbad, (or was it Marienbad, or elsewhere, and what does it matter?), how can the Woman be sure that this is not a ruse, made up to give immediate warning that we exile our emotions at our peril? That to acknowledge this for one second risks opening floodgates which will overwhelm and destroy? Or, that the ultimate expression of desire is death itself, as the film's closing line hints when the Man's voice speaks, over the night time silhouette of the hotel, of, `You.. and me.. together.. always.. in the night'. And it is an eternal night that we all subconsciously know lays in wait for us. The Great Leveller indeed! A remarkable film by any standards, and one which for me at least, is much darker and more sinister than has generally been recognised. But maybe it is just a springboard from which we can all set off on a journey guided by our own subconscious longings and dreads?

Cinema has, for the most part, been a relatively conservative art form. Perhaps it's the expense of making a feature film which has meant that they largely remain within limits and conventions imposed by commerce. Often those willing to experiment have been forced to work with low budgets and poor production values, and those regarded as more radical directors often have a very traditional approach to narrative.

But then there's Last Year in Marienbad. Robbe-Grillet was the leading light and main theorist of the nouveau roman, and already had masterpieces like In the Labyrinth and Jealousy behind him. His literary style is obsessed with visual description, meaning the jump to cinema was an obvious one. And he did it utterly without compromise.

Not that all the credit goes to Robbe-Grillet's scenario: Resnais' realisation of the ideas is near perfect, and Vierny's photography is a thing of wonder, creating a film of unique beauty.

It's possible just to sit back and enjoy it as a sumptuous treat, but there's a nagging feeling that you have to figure out what it all means. You just have to try to analyse it. Amongst all the repetitions of the dialogue, a phrase suddenly jumps out, that seems to be a key to crack the enigma, or is it just a red herring. Maybe next time I watch it, I'll crack it...

Apparently Andre Breton was one of the first to see it, and (understandably?) hated it. For all it's dreamlike atmosphere, this is fiercely structured, a game, but quite distinct from surrealism's Freudian games of chance. For Foucault and Deleuze, Robbe-Grillet's endless, inescapable mazes were paradoxically a route out of the prevailing existentialism and post-Marxism of the French intellectual elite.

A genuinely original film, showing the true potential of cinema, a challenge few since have had the courage to follow.

I need to watch it again...

A large number of people are puzzled by this film, and are unable to decide what it is about. The solution is in fact fairly straightforward.

The film is a re-working of the well-known story of Orpheus and Eurydice, and it takes place in limbo, or Hades, the Greek place for the departed, which is nothing like as bad as Christian Hell. In fact, it's a very elegant sort of venue, possibly called Hotel Marienbad -- not Hotel California !. However, it's where memory is erased, and time and place have no meaning. Shadowy people come and go. Orpheus has a bit of a struggle to extract Eurydice. In fact almost the entire film is about his efforts. The statue of Orpheus leading Eurydice away keeps telling us what it's about.

The long, tall, thin, skeletal fellow is Death, who could lose, but always wins. Hades belongs to him. But Death does initially say he could lose. Why is that ? Answer: Amor Vincit Omnia. Orpheus represents the Life Force, which manages to defeat Death and escape from his dreary clasp. But only intermittently. The process has to be repeated, according to the season, hence the references to the previous year. Normally, Orpheus sings and plays on his lute, which bends the plants and trees, but here he seems to be playing a rather ponderous organ. Personally, I think it is rather an excellent film, but a bit too long.

A man meets a married woman at a resort and they have an affair. A year later the man returns to the resort and meets her again only this time to find that she has no recollection of ever meeting him. To make things worse the world these characters inhabit is one of strangeness and disaffection. Characters speak in tongues and behave erratically and zombie like. Are these people ghosts, floating around a mansion of purgatory. Is our hero experiencing the existentialist nightmare of being alone in his perception of reality?. Is he the only one that truly exists?.

Perhaps these characters are merely that, characters trapped in a film that never seems to end and only our hero is wise to it and wants to escape the never ending loop of fictional life? The interpretations can be many and all can potentially be correct. Personally i prefer to see it as the existentialist horror it is. Bearing in mind the period it was made (books and ideas from Satre and Camus making their mark around this time)

Don't get me wrong, i'm not suggesting this film is a masterpiece or even an entertaining romp of mild escapism. The fact is i found the film very confusing, strange, irritating and actually rather boring for very long periods. I wouldn't recommend it lightly. That said, once the film was over, i did ponder the various interpretations, considered the meaning and even questioned the very nature of existence. How many films make you do that?!

After hearing about this film countless times in various interviews and critics books *particularly interviews with Peter Greenaway* I finally decided to give it a shot. And this film has definitely shot into my top five films of all time overnight.

Resnais does a good amount of things in this film that he had tried in 'Hiroshima Mon Amour', but they are all done more effectively in this, his follow-up to Hiroshima. The way the characters interact with each other and with the audience is perfect on every level, driving the confusion of the situation further into your mind as well as the characters. The editing is flawlessly non-linear and non-traditional, the cinematography is some of the best of the period. The setting in the hotel often reminded me of Kubrick's 'The Shining', with the paranoid music and long tracking shots.

I would say the best way to describe this film is 'Hiroshima Mon Amour' with a good touch of Bunuel thrown in. It is intentionally bizarre and leaves much interpretation to the viewer, but never strays into idiotic territory. 9 out of 10.

Wow, I've never seen anything quite like it but I really didn't like it. After revisiting 8 1/2, exploring a bit of Godard, and now seeing this, I'm starting to think this era of surrealist French/Italian-centric cinema just ain't for me.

The film features 94 minutes of beautiful environments and cinematography, and some really wild editing, but there isn't really a linear plot, like...at all. The man begins trying to convince the woman they met at this building once a year ago, but she can't remember and doesn't want to accept it, then...that continues, for the ENTIRE movie. Literally nothing else happens. There is almost zero progression - it remains stagnant. He just carries on and on and on repeating himself for an entire film, while the rooms, and settings, and outfits change around them. Same conversation, different rooms, for an ENTIRE MOVIE.

Now, I was able to see the art within the structure of the film and the way the movie is almost mocking itself as you're watching it, almost in a Funny Games type of way. The opening 15 minutes were the strongest part of the film in my opinion, as it's the only segment we get that is separate from the repetition of the rest of it - however, what does the intro consist of? Well, it's a long, poetic, repetitive narrative about emptiness, and...REPETITION itself. So, as you're sinking into the somewhat torturous spiral that is the meat of the movie, you'll think back to the opening narrative, and realize that you are a part of it. Clever, yet hardly enjoyable to sit through.

In the end, the only real positive takeaways to me were the absolutely striking presence of Swiss tall man Sacha Pitoeff every time he was on the screen, and the sequences in which he played "the game he never loses" - I had to laugh a majority of the times he appeared because he was simply so intimidating it was iconic. Second, the first sequence in which large rooms of people were sort of freezing up and moving in portrayed slow motion while other people were moving in standard speed around them was especially impressive - I've never seen it done like that, it was as dreamlike as dreamlike sequences get.

Overall, a pretty boring film that takes what feels to me like an empty metaphor (I think that's intentional and that's why the opening narrative was about emptiness?!) and beats you over the head with it on purpose until you feel completely lost, and... again, I think that's the point, because loss seems to be a primary theme in the end too. Another thing you will have lost is your time, LOL - but I'm glad I saw it. It's definitely someone's art.

I am amazed by the plethora of negative comments surrounding this film. Having seen it for the first time recently I thought it one of the most creative representations of a Greek myth to date. It is the story of Orpheus, a hero who attempts to rescue his love from the underworld but must convince her to leave of her own free will. The film is set in a hotel and the surrounding gardens. The film is rich in symbolic imagery and the camera shots beautiful. The score leaves something to be desired but anyone who loves Greek mythology and good cinema should appreciate this film.

A reconstruction of the tiniest details of one's memories of a point of time about a person & place directed in a mysteriously artistic way. The film felt like a poetry because of the narrative monologue. The film puts the audience in an active dilemma as whether the two strangers who happened to come across are actually strangers or acquaintances. There's an inexpiable serenity in the film which needs to be felt. I can assure that the film direction is absolutely unique and is something which has not been experienced much. You'll either really love it or put it aside, nothing in between. A definite peak in the art genre.

Even after 60+ years, Marienbad still dazzles, delights and confounds. Alain Renais was a genius and this is his masterpiece. Possibly my favorite film ever made.

Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad (1961) is an allegory about the process of time and memory, a kind of Proustian quest. Like a literary classic, the film gets better at each new viewing. Resnais's ambitious film is like a great symphony that resonates within one's soul. Last Year is, above all, harmonious, with contrapuntal lyrics as measured as a metronome. Unlike other difficult films, namely Robert Altman's great fugue, Images (1972) and David Lynch's disjointed and spastic Mulholland Drive (2001), both of which promise much and give little, Last Year fulfills its promise with an almost hypnotic, lyrical beauty.

Last Year is, in some ways closer artistically to James Joyce's Ulysses than any other film, including Joseph Strick's underrated and much maligned film of Joyce's novel (1967).

The characters may or may not know each other. The relationships developed between the characters may or may not have been real. This film is open to interpretation to say the least. I have only watched this film once and this may be to my determent but sitting through this film again would be torture.

Watching this film creates a surreal world of eerie characters in a dreamlike state. The characters are vacationing at some type of upper-class spa in Europe. The male lead (X) is trying to convince the female lead (A) that they had an affair the previous year that led them to become deeply in love with each other. The woman has no recollection of this affair and basically the movie entails the male character trying to convince the female character of the worship they have for each other but it seems the woman is in denial or the male character is mistaken. The third character (M) who could be the woman's (A) husband reminds me of Frankenstein. He is tall slight man who never loses at playing this triangle game with toothpicks. He seems to linger around being in the right place at the right time to reinforce his uncanny creepiness.

My simple interpretation of this film is that when the characters are wearing black they are conscience, when they wear white they are dreaming. A complex interpretation would be that memory is subjective in each individuals mind. This means that what the man remembers may be true but the woman is trying to suppress the memories because of her apparent marriage to Frankenstein (M) making her recollection objective. A positive note about this film is the cinematography and the use of lighting and point of view to create intense visual imagery. The ornamental detail of the architecture of the hotel is awe inspiring, documenting detail that is not apparent in the world I live in.

I am sure another look at this film may uncover some details I overlooked but I don't think that is going to happen in the near future.

best film ever made, absolute symmetry, time wise and space wise

It is like an artistic interpretation of quantum physics.

A love is going on in a mysterious hotel where the events repeat themselves, each time a different way...

best film ever made, absolute symmetry, timewise and spacewise. Just watch it. If you are patient you will get it..

This film is only appropriate for mathematicians or architects, or both and whoever has the gift to watch it and appreciate it.

I have to submit 10 lines but I have no further comments, that is it. Enjoy it Watch it Recollect.

The film first caught my attention primarily after seeing Blur's memorable video of their great song "To the End", the pristine black and white of the film ornamenting the strange acting and soaring track. "Last Year at Marienbad" (L'année dernière à Marienbad) takes the Experimental - Avant Garde and melds it into a tale of traditional romance. In an atmosphere of doubt and memory a man and a woman struggle with the past. With a panorama of aesthetic black and white, opulent baroque interiors, picture - perfect landscapes and designer clothing the movie is as much style, mood and atmosphere as substance. The juggling of time, eccentric acting and poetic script convey a surreal dreamlike reality that leaves the viewer somewhat suspended between space and time. I viewed this primarily to see Delphine Seyrig and her elegant, stylish demeanor topped by her striking features justify her being one of my all-time cinematic crushes. As with these kinds of flicks it certainly isn't for everyone - my love for all things different made me endure and tolerate this from start to finish; I doubt Joe Lumberjack will unearth the artistic sonorities of the story which is so doggedly derivative it's ripe for parody. One of those works you won't care much for but will never forget, "Last Year at Marienbad" is where art gets bored with itself and decides to trek uncharted waters, for better or worse. And we should all be grateful and thankful for it.

I do not disagree with the comments that have been made about this movie by other reviewers. But this does not change the fact that the movie is ultimately tedious and boring to watch. Yes, it might expand the traditional role of what movies can do, especially in the American market and yes it might give unique insight in the psychology of the three people involved.

That does not change my feeling that the movie is painful to watch in the sense of: there has to be a more comfortable way of bringing this message across. Experimental cinema is great; the message does not have to be a comfortable message, but if half of the audience turns off because the method of bringing the message across is like Sisiphous pushing the rock up the hill, then the whole issue is mute. I did like the visuals but the "oh so remarkable organ" reminded me of more of the background music of the early seventies softporn movies that are shown late night on TV.