'' (translated as ''Last Year '''in''' Marienbad'' in the UK and ''Last Year '''at''' Marienbad'' in North America) is a
1961 French Movie directed by
Alain Resnais , starring
Delphine Seyrig ,
Giorgio Albertazzi ,
Sacha Pitoëff .
It is famous for its enigmatic narrative structure, in which truth and fiction are difficult to distinguish, and the exact temporal and spatial relationship of the events is open to question. The
Dream-like Nature Of The Film has fascinated and baffled audiences and critics, some hailing it as a masterpiece, others finding it incomprehensible.
To say the film has a plot is not quite accurate. It depicts the repetitive, almost mathematical interactions of three characters and even at the end of the film, the sequence of events remains unclear. Only the relationship of the three central characters, who remain nameless, is firm.
The film is set at an elite social gathering at a
Chateau . A man (known only as 'X') approaches a woman (known as 'A') and asks "Didn't we meet at Marienbad last year?" The woman is non-committal and demure. "Didn't you say you would leave your husband and we would run away together?" he asks. Again, she says "No," but they continue to talk as if they perhaps had indeed made plans. When a second man (known as 'M'), who may be A's husband, approaches, the conversation ends somewhat awkwardly and the characters move on.
As the film progresses, the relationship of the characters and the sequence of events is not made clear. Instead images and events such as the conversation above are repeated several times, but in different places in the chateau and its grounds. Several sequences involve the men at the chateau passing the time with various games (such as
Nim and
Target Shooting ). There are numerous tracking shots of the chateau's corridors, with ambiguous voiceovers.
Among the notable images in the film is a scene in which two characters (and the camera) rush out of the chateau and are faced with a tableau of figures arranged in a geometric garden; although the people cast long dramatic shadows, the trees in the garden do not. The
Dreamlike quality of this image is reminiscent of the works of
Max Ernst ,
Giorgio De Chirico ,
Yves Tanguy , and
Paul Delvaux . The effect was created by painting the shadows of the human figures onto the ground.
Marienbad is a town in the
Czech Republic (it is not clear whether the film's setting is meant to be Marienbad or somewhere else). Resnais filmed the scenes within several different chateaus and their grounds, including the
Nymphenburg Palace in
Munich . He edited them together to produce a disorientating space that does not make geographical sense. Some additional footage was shot at an indoor studio.
The film was nominated for the
1963 Academy Award For Writing Original Screenplay (
Alain Robbe-Grillet ), and it won the
Golden Lion at the 1961
Venice Film Festival . In 1963
Adonis Kyrou declared the film a total triumph in his influential ''Le Surréalisme au Cinéma'' (p.206), recognizing the ambiguous environment and obscure motives within the film as representing many of the concerns of
Surrealism in narrative cinema.
Less reverently, the film received an entry in ''
The Fifty Worst Films Of All Time '', by
Harry Medved with
Randy Dreyfuss and
Michael Medved .
The film's style has influenced the look of several commercials (including those in the late
1980s for
Calvin Klein 's Obsession) and the
Music Video for
"To The End" by the British rock band
Blur , which is a direct
Pastiche of the film.
- Ado Kyrou, ''Le Surréalisme au Cinéma'' (Paris: Le Terrain Vague, 1963)
- Jean-Louis Leutrat, ''L'Année dernière à Marienbad'' (London: British Film Institute , 2000)
