A man, X (Giorgio Albertazzi), tells a fellow hotel guest, A (Delphine Seyrig), that they met and loved the year before. As the hours progress he attempts to convince her of this as the lady’s husband, M (Sacha Pitoëff), stands waiting in the wings.

CRITIQUE

Without question, in all my tenure here at Moviefreak the Blu-ray review for Last Year at Marienbad has been one of the most difficult for me to write. This film simply boggles the mind as it defies any and all easy attempts to classify or deconstruct it. Acclaimed director Alain Resnais’ unique and timeless melodrama, the winner of the Venice Film Festival Golden Lion in 1961, nominated for an Academy Award for writer Alain Robbe-Grillet’s bizarre and cryptic screenplay in 1963, is a meditative brain teaser of the nth degree, and trying to put it into some sort of cinematic perspective borders on the impossible.

I guess the first thing a person needs to know going in is that this is one of the most imitated, parodied and flat-out copied pieces of cinema in motion picture history. Stanely Kubrick (The Shining, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Barry Lyndon), Ingmar Bergman (The Silence), Lars von Trier (Europa), Jim Henson (Labyrinth), Cameron Crowe (Vanilla Sky), James Cameron (The Abyss), Chris Marker (La Jétee), Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Prestige), George Lucas (THX-1138), Martin Scorsese (The Age of Innocence), Michelangelo Antonioni (Blow-Up), George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead), I think a serious case can be made that all of these remarkable filmmakers (just to name of few) have found inspiration in Resnais and Robbe-Grillet’s metaphorical puzzle box.

The next thing probably to know about it is that the film has sparked ferocious debate all along the critical spectrum ever since its Venice debut. Pauline Kael famously hated it, while the usually hard to please New York Times critic Bowsley Crowther hailed it as a masterpiece. Roger Ebert has said in his writing he agrees that some will find it “deliberate” and “artificial” yet also proclaims it is a film he has never been able to forget, while virtual no-name author and critic Harry Medved gave it prime placement alongside Sergei M. Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, Antonioni’s Zabriske Point and Phil Tucker’s Robot Monster in his book The Fifty Worst Films of All-Time.

For my part, ever since I received this fantastic Criterion Collection Blu-ray to review I have proceeded to watch the disc four times. It is modestly paced. It is extremely esoteric. It is highly metaphorical. Heck, it is probably incredibly pretentious (Resnais himself claims in the original theatrical trailer that the audience “will be the coauthor of a film” and that they will “decide if this image, or this one is lying or telling the truth"). It’s difficult stuff to swallow, and I wouldn’t begrudge anyone who at first glance has their brow curl in a snarl from staring dumbfounded at it while scratching their temple uttering a rather loud, “Huh?”

Yet I also see where Ebert is coming from (his thoughts said much better than I could ever hope to in his wonderful 1999 essay which can be found here). I can state unequivocally that from this point forward I seriously doubt I will ever be able to forget Last Year at Marienbad, will be able to see long tacking shots in immaculately ornate hotels or view interlocking wraparound narratives that call into question all you have seen before in the same way ever again. Without question, this is a film anyone who even remotely considers themselves a fan of important cinema needs to watch, and for the life of me I have trouble accepting the fact I’ve never taken the time to search it out until now.

There is a lot more I could say. I could talk about the performances, how they somehow bridge the divide between being overly theatrical and annoyingly nondescript to transform into something altogether new and mesmerizing. I could rave about cinematographer Sacha Vierny’s beautiful and lush black-and-white widescreen photography while throwing in superlatives about how Jacques Saulnier’s production design sets everything off just perectly.

But what I have discovered is that the fun of Last Year in Marienbad is to essentially come to it cold. All you need to know is that it is unique and influential, and whether a viewer loves it or hates it the one thing they will know for sure afterwards is that they have seen something overflowing in originality. Almost fifty years later Resnais and Robbe-Grillet’s achievement sparks conversations the likes of which few others, filmmakers young and old, from Hollywood to Bollywood and to all places in-between, returning to it again and again for inspiration.

It is, in a word, classic, justifiably earning that distinction even if its own co-authors - Resnais and Robbe-Grillet – famously disagree themselves about the picture’s ultimate meaning. Like the director said, the viewer truly is the real co-author, and where some will see genius others will see something entirely different, and like any piece of art worth talking about in the end that dialogue of differing opinions is ultimately the only one truly matters.

THE VIDEO

Criterion has done it again, proving they are close to the end-all be-all where it comes to Blu-ray. Last Year at Marienbad is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio with a transfer supervised by the director himself and it looks sensational. The image pops right off the screen with nary a nick or a scratch, Vierny’s cinematography so poetically lush I could have looked at a constant montage of snippets from it until the cows came home.

THE AUDIO

The film is presented in French Monaural with optional new and improved English subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

Can I just say the extras are great and leave it at that? Seriously, Criterion rarely misses anything when it comes to films like this, Last Year at Marienbad not close to being an exception. The all-new interview with Resnais, the brand new documentary on the film’s production, a new video interview with film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, the two featurettes on Resnais, Toute la Mémoire du Monde and Le Chant du Styréne, all of these frankly blew me away.

The only think I would say is don’t read the booklet included with the disc before watching the film. Not because it isn’t any good – in fact it is excellent, critic Mark Polizzotti’s essay a model of its kind – but more because I feel the less you know going in the better. Read it after that first viewing, marinate over what the authors attempt to say, and then return to the picture after you’ve thought it all over. That’s what I did, and to say I was satisfied would be a decided understatement.

(On a side note, the slip sleeve cover for this Criterion disc is flat-out horrible! It doesn’t fit and I swear I broke two nails trying to get the darn thing out. As much as I love this kind of packaging, if the distributor is going to start making them like this than here’s my vote for going back to basic plastic cases right this very instant.)

FINAL THOUGHTS

Last Year at Marienbad, like Citizen Kane, Metropolis, It Happened One Night, Vertigo and Battleship Potemkin, might just be one of the single most important films of all-time. What it has meant to the art of cinema cannot be easily quantified. What can be said is that it is a movie, love-it or hate-it, that simply must be seen by everyone, and while I’m not going to urge you to buy it I will say that if you don’t put Resnais’ classic into you Netflix queue you’ll be doing yourself a major disservice.