"... This story
is over. A few seconds and it will be frozen forever, in a marble past, like
this garden carved in the stone, this hotel, with its rooms now deserted, these
people motionless and silent, perhaps dead some time ago. Guardians of the
corridors through which I advance to meet you, between lines of immobile,
vigilant, indifferent faces. While you doubt, perhaps, staring at the entrance
of this garden "
The voiceover (narrator) which
walks us through the labyrinthine corridors and rooms of the hotel where the
(non) history of The Last Year in Marienbad takes place gives us some clues
about possible interpretations of this fascinating cinematic dream hatched by
the two hands by the script by Alain Robbe-Grillet and Alain Resnais' camera
(although the screenwriter claimed that the text he gave to Resnais "was
more than a script", as it contained "the breakdown describing the
film plane to plane, almost image by image, with the planned assembly ", always
according to Robbe-Grillet, Resnais shot the film" respecting very
carefully "the written" and “without ever intervening to try to
modify something ", words with which the writer seems to claim greater
authorship of the final work - an idea that, seeing the later works of the
filmography of Resnais, one would not dare to question - although later, this idea clarifies that Resnais nevertheless "turned
the film into a work by Alain Resnais, into something much more psychological,
through almost imperceptible changes, in the direction of actors, in the sound
effects, in things so imperceptible that if you read my book and see the movie
you may think they are exactly the same ").
Well, this fascinating creation that some have wanted to
describe as an allegory about death or as a clear immersion in the world of
dreams, as the pure representation of desire, as the disturbing universe of
poetic creation or the immense and therefore unbounded space of ideas, gives
even for multiple interpretations more, and, surely, to possible and reasonable
arguments of which only you can be the creator. For a story as simple as its
plot might seem, I warn you, it is only a plausible idea of what the plot could
be and nothing more. The real story is directed to the emotions of the
spectator through its representation, and to the disconcerting conjunction of
images and words.
Be that as it may, we are faced with a work that allows
endless interpretations (and therefore the one that is exposed here is only one
of the many possible), in which the plot is broken down as in an immense puzzle
of infinite possibilities; a three-dimensional puzzle in which time and space
unfold, overlap, repeat or stagnate, without submitting at any time to the
logic of conventional narrative. A minimal plot line is the starting point on
which the enigmatic universe of the film is structured: X (Giorgio Albertazzi)
is in the rooms of a luxurious hotel with Y (Delphine Seyrig), to which he
tries to convince that both had met a year earlier in the gardens of
Frederiksbad ("or maybe it was in Marienbad"), citing for a new meeting
a year later, and Y claims not to remember anything that X assures him
happened. The encounters of X and Y follow one another repetitively and
non-linearly (changing the scenarios and the costumes of the characters without
any apparent logic) in a scenario inhabited by individuals that act as
automatons devoid of any emotion, phantasmagorical shadows that repeat one and
again the same banal conversations, the same gestures and movements. The film
argues the complexity of metaphysics of presence in a game of absences. (frame 1). In the midst of this authentic army
of undead, among whom the disturbing M (Sacha Pitoëff) stands out, X manifests
as the only character with initiative, rebelling against the absence of
emotions of all the characters, including Y.
Frame 1
"You have not changed, it seems like yesterday we split
up. But you seem not to remember, "laments X during his first encounter
with Y (frame 2); and in the face of her refusal, she insists on every new
occasion: "It was last year. So much have I changed? Or do you pretend not
to recognize me? "Memory or its absence (forgetfulness), themes so present
in the first films of Resnais (think of Night and Fog, All the Memory of the
World or Hiroshima, mon amour), seem to categorically define the different
essence of both characters: X, as a conscious being, tries desperately to
provoke (or perhaps generate) the memory in Y, which persists in denying the
facts that it describes ("It was not me, you get confused with another
person"). Like the rest of the inanimate beings that roam around the
hotel, and it seems to base their existence precisely on the lack of memories
(and hence the automatic actions repeat stubbornly, as if each time it were
the first to execute them).
Frame 2
X's struggle, therefore, is to rescue Y from the shadow
world in which she is trapped. Like Orpheus in search of Eurydice in Hades, X
goes again and again to the realm of "silent rooms where the noise of
footsteps is absorbed by carpets so thick, so thick, that one does not hear one's
own steps" in search of his beloved, to whom he gives as proof of his
first encounter a photograph "taken one afternoon in the park" (frame
3). But Y negates the evidence and persists in not remembering, or perhaps
simply is unable to do so, given its condition of being inanimate (icy human
statue that we always see with the same gesture - the left hand on the right
shoulder - at first of each new appearance - frame 4).
Frame 3
Frame 4
"You did not expect anything. It was as if you were
dead. But it's not like that. You are still alive. You are here. I see you,
"X insists obstinately to break the spell that holds Y among"
immobile and silent people, perhaps dead some time ago." And, after
numerous and repeated attempts (as evidenced by the image of opening a drawer in which he keeps countless
copies of the same photograph that again and again gave him X - frame 5),
finally the hex is broken and X finally gets move away with Y, taking a path
"along straight paths, between the immutable statues, losing forever, in
the quiet night. Alone with me "(frame 6).
Frame 5
Frame 6
The movie starts with a fascinating aand disconcerting,
labyrinthine and disproportionate at times and no less tricky. "Hallways,
carpets, stuccos, mirrors and more corridors, carpets ...", narrates
constantly the voice in off, true protagonist of the film. Enjoy architecture,
light and gloom as characters; that garden of triangular hedges without shadows
in front of the disproportions of the characters, object characters like
sculptures inside a board, or the amazing shine of the looks and the lips, the
delicacy of the gestures and the rigidity of the bodies and walls.If you penetrate,
do it by rushing even in restlessness, letting yourself be hurt and shuddered
by that recurrent organ music, which seems to come out of the fingers of a
drunken Bach in a night of composition in leaks. Make it all yours, as if,
bored in the subway, play to invent the history of the bodies and minds that
surround them, mixing sounds and words, looks and conversations, taking them to
the field they want. And, if not, do it, you might learn to like so much
incoherence, but in any case, do not forget, if you see it, that perhaps
without it there wouldn’t be films like The Exterminating Angel or The Shining,
much of Scorsese's narrative , the world of Lynch and many others.
The eternal fascination with Last Year at Marienbad is that every time the viewer thinks he has
found the key to the riddle, a new aspect appears that ruins all his theories.
For example, when the woman asks the man to leave her alone, he leans against a
balustrade that collapses because of the pressure. It must be a fleeting
fantasy, the viewer thinks, and when the balustrade is seen again, it will be
intact. But it's still broken! Does this reflect the character's unwavering
conviction that his fantasy has actually occurred? Is it not more likely that
it is a metaphor for a woman's desire to be free of the stranger? Thinking
carefully, the second explanation seems more plausible. But, with regard to
this enigmatic film, the only thing that can be said is "I think",
and never "I'm sure".
In a second reflection, last year at Marienbad, with its
subtle clues, its complicated interrelation between past and present and its
representation of a reality that can simply be a dream, it acquires the
appearance of a detective story. The figures (they are more figures than
characters) move in an exquisitely controlled manner by a director who shows
the precision of a skilled chess player. The oneiric world in which the story
takes place has the quality of a fairy tale and, like most of them, a certain
touch of hidden threat that lurks at all times to its characters. The fascination that this film exerts is based on its form
and structure, which makes it a key work for 20th century cinema.
Cast:
Delphine Seyrig A
Giorgio Albertazzi X
Sacha Pitoëff M
Credits:
Director: Alain Resnais
Screenplay: Alain Robbe-Grillet
Producer: Pierre Courau
Producer: Raymond Froment
Music: Francis Seyrig
Cinematography: Sacha Vierny
Editing: Jasmine Chasney
Editing: Henri Colpi
Production design: Jacques Saulnier
Costumes: Coco Chanel
Costumes: Bernard Evein
Set decoration: Jean-Jacques Fabre
Set decoration: Georges Glon
Set decoration: André Piltant
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