Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
Directed by Alain Resnais / Alain Robbe-Grillet
Genres - Drama, Romance |
Sub-Genres - Surrealist Film, Psychological Drama |
Release Date - May 25, 1961 (USA) |
Run Time - 94 min. |
Countries - France, Italy |
MPAA Rating - NR
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Synopsis by Jason Ankeny
A cinematic puzzle, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad is a radical exploration of the formal possibilities of film. Beautifully shot in Cinemascope by Sacha Vierny, the movie is a riddle of seduction, a mercurial enigma darting between a present and past which may not even exist, let alone converge. The film stars Giorgio Albertazzi as an unnamed sophisticate attempting to convince a similarly nameless woman (Delphine Seyrig) that they met and were romantically involved a year ago in the same enormous, baroque European hotel. In the end, it hardly matters -- they're not characters so much as pawns anyway. Hypnotically dreamlike, Last Year at Marienbad is a surrealist parody of Hollywood melodrama, a high-fashion romance with a dark, alien underbelly. According to screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet, the movie is a pure construction, without a frame of reference outside of its own existence -- the lives of its characters begin when the lights go down, and conclude when they come back up.
Characteristics
Moods
Themes
Keywords
extramarital-affair, love, motel, obsession
Attributes
High Artistic Quality, High Historical Importance