Guess the pic…

from Jenny Bee

She’s surpassed herself with this one.

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L’Année Dernière à Marienbad (no 32)

 

by Allan Fish

(France 1961 94m) DVD1/2

Aka. Last Year at Marienbad

Or was it Frederiksbad?

p  Raymond Froment, Anatole Dauman  d  Alain Resnais  w  Alain Robbe-Grillet  ph  Sacha Vierny  ed  Henri Colpi, Jasmie Chasney  m  Francis Seyrig  art  Jacques Saulnier  cos  Coco Chanel, Bernard Evein

Delphine Seyrig (A), Giorgio Albertazzi (X), Sacha Pitoeff (M), Françoise Bertin, Luce Garcia-Villet, Héléna Korbel, François Spira, Karin Toche-Mittler, Pierre Barbaud,

L’Année Dernière à Marienbad is undoubtedly one of the most exasperating films ever made, but it is also undeniably one of the most original, going beyond surrealism to find a category all of its own. Everything that happens is perfectly plausible, it’s just that, well nothing really does happen, yet much takes place.  That is the paradox of it. 

Alain Resnais first came to prominence with his magisterial Holocaust documentary Nuit et Brouillard in 1955 before becoming one of the darlings of the intellgentsia with Hiroshima, Mon Amour, a sort of anti romance.  Yet Marienbad is the film he’s most likely to be remembered for, a film of such joyous enpuzzlement as to resemble a cryptic puzzle for minimalists.  Taking place in a huge French château, a man meets a woman who may, or may not, have had an affair with him the previous year at Marienbad, or was it Frederiksbad?  They spend their time there dreaming of their possible past and future and of their desires.

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