Last Year at Marienbad
1961 ‘L'Année dernière à Marienbad’ Directed by Alain Resnais
Synopsis
In a sprawling baroque hotel, a man tries to persuade a married woman to leave her husband and run away with him. He reminds her of her promise when they met a year ago, at Marienbad, but the woman seems not to remember that meeting...
Popular reviews
More-
In my review for Eraserhead, I dismissed the idea of assigning a star rating to the film as reductive, and immediately wondered if the same stance applied to "Last Year at Marienbad" as well. "Marienbad" is a loose, slippery, meditative exploration of interaction and memory and famously looks like a Magritte painting with celluloid in place of oil.
However, "Marienbad" is very much a film, and it is the constant mastery and subversion of these very filmic techniques that give "Marienbad" the hypnotizing effect that drew me in. It is a powerful orchestration between bold optical movements and tricks and jarring cutting that makes you feel relaxed and dozy but then jolting you to attention. Shot with quick dolly movements,…
-
Holy beautiful. Meditative and hypnotizing.
-
From 84->92.
Actually probably much less substantial than Muriel, but man does this look like a work of capital A Art on the big screen. Long tracking shots, slow zooms, heavenly or hellish exposures all cut over slabs of symphony to a pace that's at once lethargic and hauntingly ajar. And it's basically the last thirty minutes of Vertigo constant, on repeat, (look at all my dresses, etc), and that's the best part of Vertigo so Resnais can't really do wrong here. Who knows how much Wong Kar-Wai cribbed from this for In the Mood for Love, doing with color what Resnais does with b&w. It's a fetish object about fetish objects; there's a sinister dimension to Albertazzi's stare/glare/gaze that…
-
Por momentos me parecía una película porno arty donde habían mutilado todas las escenas de sexo. Indudablemente bella y evocadora pero también muy autoindulgente ¿Como nuestros propios recuerdos?
-
This was a really amazing film. Never before have I seen images and sound matched so well, with such thought and with such effect.
The film tells the story of a man trying to convince a married woman that she had made a promise to him on the same day last year. In doing so, we are treated to the man's story and as the narrative monologue is paired with the images of last year we constantly reappraise what is the truth and what has been lost or contorted by memory. The film does very well to portray this confused and confabulated world by double taking and changing details as we go over the story making it all more convoluted…
-
it is as confusing as it is entrancing but is in undeniable that you will react in more than one way to this ultimately fascinating film.
this film is gorgeous, cinematography and production design are truly breathtaking and even if you get lost with the plot there is plenty to watch.
this film's framing and camera movements really set the mood but it is the sound design with the voice over that will drive you crazy, in a bad and good way.
however, the plot, as great as it is sometimes, ultimately fails and you don't feel rewarded as a viewer.
interesting, intriguing and a picture that gets better and better the more times you watch it [i had to watch it twice].
Recent reviews
More-
A surreal, strangely haunting masterwork of arthouse cinema. Resnais using the camera and the locations superbly to convey a haunting sense of memory lost. A film about lost memory, a ghost story, who knows but all the more magical experience for it.
-
From 84->92.
Actually probably much less substantial than Muriel, but man does this look like a work of capital A Art on the big screen. Long tracking shots, slow zooms, heavenly or hellish exposures all cut over slabs of symphony to a pace that's at once lethargic and hauntingly ajar. And it's basically the last thirty minutes of Vertigo constant, on repeat, (look at all my dresses, etc), and that's the best part of Vertigo so Resnais can't really do wrong here. Who knows how much Wong Kar-Wai cribbed from this for In the Mood for Love, doing with color what Resnais does with b&w. It's a fetish object about fetish objects; there's a sinister dimension to Albertazzi's stare/glare/gaze that…
-
A stunning puzzle of a film that left me even more perplexed, albeit more satisfied as well, than the first time around
-
75 out of 100
This is how you make an Art film everybody. I barely give a shit what it has to say, as long as it says it with an in an unforgettable manner (that's not exactly true but I'm not remotely prepared to dissect this film, but I will say I assumed it to be a haunting depiction of hell). What with the reputation of MARIENBAD being pretentious and impenetrable I was expecting a slog, but this plays out like more like a David Lynch film with the score from CARNIVAL OF SOULS, and the cyclical dialogue and bizarre imagery is far from the boring stock 60's art film dreck it could be, and makes this and unsettling… -
Though parts of it were no doubt lost on me I still enjoyed getting caught up in the whirlwind of this surreal story, being thrown from one place to the next and back again and feeling satisfyingly topsy-turvy.
-
Last Year at Marienbad is a mystery about some bullshit. I can't really say what it's about because I didn't fucking care. For people who can tolerate experimental film, I guess I can see the value in how this deconstructs narrative, but for me, it was excruciating to watch. I hated it about as much as I've hated any movie.
-
This is art house. For better or worse. Beautifully shot. Dreadfully boring. Music like nails on a chalkboard. More memorable for all that's been written about it than any real substance. It will need another couple viewings, but I'm not even sure I want to commit to that (aka waste my time).
Life's too short to pick apart Marienbad.
-
This is known as the epitome of high-art and intellectualism in film so of course I had to see it. I’m not saying I totally understood everything but it sure kept me intrigued. It is haunting and captivating. The cinematography and sets are gorgeous. There are a lot of interpretations as to the meaning but for me the methodical beauty was enough for me to appreciate it. This is a subjective film that was an experiment in high-art and style. Many future films owe great debt to Marienbad for paving the way.
-
Por momentos me parecía una película porno arty donde habían mutilado todas las escenas de sexo. Indudablemente bella y evocadora pero también muy autoindulgente ¿Como nuestros propios recuerdos?