Big Picture Big Sound

The Film

French director Alain Resnais' now classic film, Last Year at Marienbad, which first saw its U.S. release in 1962, is a lightning rod of controversy in the cinematic world. Some herald it as a marvel of modernist and post-modern filmmaking, the film that created the archetype for art house cinema. Others look to it as nothing more than pretentious nonsense impossible to decipher. Regardless of on which side of the debate one falls, there is no debate over the technical skill and accomplishment that went into Marienbad. It is a truly groundbreaking piece of formal filmmaking, a work that laid the foundation for many of the cinematic styles that would inform contemporary films, in both the mainstream and art house movements.

Surrealistic, haunting, poetic, dense and enigmatic, Last Year at Marienbad has no formal plot. Instead, the loose story unfolds through images, symbolism, and repeated lines of dialogue and motion. In fact, the protagonists aren't even given names, only the letters A (Delphine Seyrig), X (Giorgio Albertazzi) and M (Sacha Pitoëff). None of these characters are developed in a traditional sense. The story focuses less on emotions or plot than flashes of events unfolding in a manner that defies any sense of time. Often, actors stand, frozen in position, like statues.

At an unnamed chateau in an indeterminate location, X approaches the married A and asks her if they hadn't met the year before at Marienbad. A, in alternating responses often occurring in the very same scene,  seems to both deny knowing X and acknowledge their previous meeting. X then proceeds to try to convince A that they had met and she promised to leave her husband, M, and run away with him.

Through dreamlike sequences that use shadows, black, white and grey, and sharp camera angles, a back story of X and A's meeting is told, but it is impossible to tell if they are events that really took place or mere visualizations of the narrative from X. As X tries to convince A, he also has some intellectual confrontations with her husband, M, such as a game of picking up sticks or cards that M never loses.

Last Year at Marienbad is the starting block for all forms of non-linear storytelling in film. It is easy to see a direct line between Resnais' Marienbad and the films of Tarantino, for instance. Resnais relies on the process of filmmaking and technical proclivity to create a piece of visual art that disregards any character development or need to simply entertain the audience. Rather, this enigmatic, stream of consciousness work challenges the audience to create their own meaning out of the sounds and images. Marienbad will be difficult to accept for anyone who views film as a simple, escapist form of entertainment, but it will surely appeal to anyone willing to work through it and accept it as a questioning work of art, like sculpture, which the characters in the film often imitate.

The Picture

Marienbad makes its way onto this Blu-ray release from the Criterion Collection with a director approved transfer of its 2.35:1 black and white source in a 1080p/24 high definition AVC/MPEG-4 encoding. Approved by director Alain Renais himself, viewers can be assured that this Criterion Collection Blu-ray release looks just as intended.

The film's black and white palette looks superbly lush, with deep, tar-like blacks, and pure whites that are not clipped by excessively high contrast ratios. The film grain is preserved, but never distracting, and detail is quite strong. The intricate ornamental workings of the hotel walls and in things like chandeliers are resolved effortlessly. Foreground detail is strong, with a lot of high frequency information preserved, but backgrounds sometimes tend to soften just a tad.

Deficits in the source are surprisingly subdued, with only some occasional scratches on the frames apparent, particularly during one scene with "A" where the film suddenly turns to a stark, all white, high-contrast palette.

The Sound

Criterion has provided the soundtrack in a restored LPCM 1.0 version and the original theatrical mix in LPCM 1.0. Both versions sound good, but the restored option definitely provides slightly better clarity and a little less harshness in the dialogue. Otherwise, they are both quite similar and kudos must go to Criterion for providing the mixes in true monaural, 1.0 options rather than a monaural 2.0 configuration utilizing a phantom centre channel. The restored mix offers up a slightly wider amount of dynamics, and the serialist score from Francis Seyrig, which relies mainly on a Messaien-esque organ, is eerie and full, yet never drowns out the dialogue.

The Extras

Typical for Criterion, this release of Last Year at Marienbad is given a hefty amount of informative supplements that include discussions with the filmmakers and two pre-Marienbad non-fiction documentaries by Resnais. Going through the extras on this release is imperative for anyone seeking a greater understanding of the film. The excellent essay on Marienbad in the included booklet is also a must-read.

The extras available on this release are:

• Alain Resnais Audio Interview -- an interview conducted by film scholar François Thomas with director Alain Resnais exclusively for the Criterion Collection in 2008. Resnais gives some very thoughtful and detailed information on the film, its production and unexpected impact on cinema including debunking the idea that, at its root, Last Year at Marienbad is really about a rape.
• Unraveling the Enigma: The Making of Marienbad (1.78:1; 1080p/24) This thirty-three-minute documentary provides interviews with many of Alain Resnais' collaborators -- including his assistant directors Jean Léon and Volker Schlöndorff, script girl Sylvette Baudrot, and production designer Jacques Saulnier -- as they reminisce on their work with the legendary director and their time spent working on Marienbad.
• Ginette Vincendeau on Last Year at Marienbad (1.78:1; 1080p/24)-- Last Year at Marienbad has been viewed as both cinematic genius and intellectual nonsense, and everything in between. In this interview, film scholar Ginette Vincendeau discusses the various interpretations of the film and elucidates some of its mysteries.
• Documentary Films by Resnais -- In an even more surprising yet welcome move, Criterion has provided two of Resnais' non-fiction documentary films from the late-fifties. In these films one can already see Resnais looking forward to the style and technique that would come to define Marienbad:
  • Toute La Mémoire du Monde (1.33:1, 1080i; Black and White)
  • Le Chant du Styrène (2.40:1; 1080p/24) -- This brilliantly filmed look at the inside of a styrene factory is filled with brilliant splashes of color and modernist angles.
• Trailers

Final Thoughts

Whether one loves or hates the film, Last Year at Marienbad's impact on contemporary cinema cannot be gainsaid. The non-linear story, the odd, almost non-existent characters, the camera work and technical revolutions are today the definition of art house cinema, and have also had a stylistic impact on mainstream cinema.

Last Year at Marienbad may always remain a controversial and difficult piece of cinema; a dividing line between philosophies of what makes a film good as well as what the term "art" truly means. In the end, that is probably the truest sign that Resnais' Marienbad is a form of high art.

Criterion Collection has offered up a typically strong release with Marienbad on Blu-ray, staying true to the filmmakers' intent as well as offering up a solid and caring transfer of the film with informative supplements. To recommend this title as an essential stop on the journey of film appreciation is an easy task.

Where to Buy

• L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad) on Blu-ray Disc

Product Details

• Actors: Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoeff, Luce Garcia-Ville, Helena Kornel
• Directors: Alain Resnais
• Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
• Audio/Language: French LPCM 1.0 (restored and original mixes)
• Subtitles: English
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Criterion
• Blu-ray Disc Release Date: June 23, 2009
• Run Time: 94 minutes
• List Price: $39.95
• Extras:
  • Filmmaker Featurettes
  • Two documentary films by Alain Resnais
  • Exclusive Audio Interview with Alain Resnais