Last Year at Marienbad

Easily the most perplexing masterpiece to emerge from the French New Wave, this elegant exercise in form over narrative is the unique product of a charmed collaboration: Director Alain Resnais had just dazzled critics with his challenging feature debut, Hiroshima Mon Amour, and scenarist Alain Robbe-Grillet had set the French literary world afire as a leading proponent of the nouveau roman. As a team, they conceived "a story of persuasion," set in a maze-like chateau full of mirrors and endless corridors, in which the handsome, debonair seducer X (played by Italian heartthrob Giorgio Albertazzi) makes repeated attempts to convince the beguiling beauty A (Delphine Seyrig) that they had fallen in love a year earlier at another spa retreat and had agreed to meet again at the chateau. A sense of competitive menace is generated by encounters between X and A's vigilant husband/protector M (Sacha Pitoëff), but X's mission is ultimately successful. The film can be read as a dream of the past, a vision of the future, a memory not to be trusted, a suppressed rape scenario, or even a ghost story in a hermetic setting (which would explain its later influence on Stanley Kubrick's The Shining). Off-putting to some (critic Pauline Kael called it "an aimless disaster") and guaranteed to confound anyone who favors conventional narrative, the audacious and lavishly appointed Last Year at Marienbad will reward any viewer who's willing to simply watch the film on its own terms. Criterion's DVD and (especially) Blu-ray editions are stunning, boasting a director-approved, high-definition digital transfer that is a feast for the eyes. Extras include a new audio interview with Resnais, a new 'making-of' documentary; an interview with film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, two short documentaries by Resnais--"All the Memory of the World" (1956) and "Styrene" (1958)—and an accompanying booklet. An historically and critically significant film, this is highly recommended. (J. Shannon) [Blu-ray/DVD Review—Aug. 13, 2019—Kino Lorber, 94 min., in French w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $19.99, Blu-ray: $29.99—Making its latest appearance on DVD and Blu-ray, 1961’s Last Year at Marienbad features a great transfer and a DTS-HD 2.0 soundtrack on the Blu-ray release. Extras include audio commentary by film historian Tim Lucas, an 'A to Z' visual essay by TIFF Cinematheque programmer James Quandt (52 min.), a 'making-of' featurette (48 min.), an interview with filmmaker Volker Schlondorff (33 min.), director Alain Resnais’s 1956 short 'Toute la memoire du monde' (22 min.), and a booklet essay by Vanity Fair film critic K. Austin Collins. Bottom line: an excellent edition of this French New Wave classic.]