L'Annee derniere a Marienbad (Last Year in Marienbad) BFI Film Classics

L'ANNÉE DERNIERE A MARIENBAD

TRAN5LATED BY PAUL HAMMOND

• Resnaís on se!

Publishing

CONTENT5 First published in 2000 by the BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE 21 Stephen Street, London W1P 2LN

1 A Controversial Work 7

Copyr1ght © Jean-Louis Leutrat 2000 TranslatlOn copynght © Paul Hammond

The Film's Background 10

The Brítish Film Institute promotes greater understanding and apprec1ation of, and access to, film and moving image culture in the UK.

2 3 The Genesis of the Film 17

4 A Description of the Film 28

5 The Two 'L'Année dernÜ~re aMaríenbad' 52 6 'L'Année derniere aMarienbad' and the History of Cinema 62 Notes 68 Credits 70 Bibliography 71

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book lS available from the British Library ISBN 0-85170-821-8 Series design by Andrew Barron & Collis Clements Associates Typeset In Fournier and Franklin Gothic by D R Bungay Associates, Burghfield, Berks

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A CONTROVERSIAL WORK

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oLitsre1ease L'Année derniere a Manenbad had íts fieree as well asits staunch supporters. Among the former was Michel lVlc)lll:let::'JL'IIO notion of aeting, no grasp of the rudiments of déeor, no narrative, nothing but pathetic Httle intellectual games which solemnly play at being cinema.'1 Years latel' this text would echo in J .... - ..-, ... ,.~ Loureelles's dictionary entry, where it states that Resnais's film, most insane the cinema has ever produced', is not of 'notable' is tantamount to saying that it has none. 2 In the other eamp, Jaeques Brunius wrote in 1962 in Sight and .\,;,m" th"t L'Année derniere aMarienbad was 'the film 1 had been waiting during the last thirty years', adding: '1 am now quite prepared to claim that Marienbad is the greatest film ever made, and to pity those who eannot see this.'3 In 1963 the magazine Artsept published a eolleetion of writings on the film, whieh opened with an extraet from the letter an 'ineredibly moved and dazzled' Michel Leiris had written to Alain Resnais on 20 May 1961:

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Subdued by the images and imbued by all the words he hears, the viewer willingly enters into the film (or allows himself to be penetrated by id) and finds himself transfixed by an endless stream of prodigious tableaux akin (in their eternal fixity of purpose and their power of fascination) to those that memories and desires can offer him at the most intense moments of his daily life - something very clase, in short, to what Sartre describes as 'prívileged sltuations'. 4 Philosophers in particular were instantly enamoured of Resnais's film. In 1963 Genevieve Rodis-Lewis, an expert on Descartes and Malebranehe, published a text ealled 'Mirror of My Thought' whieh ends with a superlative analysis of the long 'bleaehed-out' traeking shot: An absolutely cinematk language is elaborated here which reaches the intellect only when it has first passed through the senses, as the philosophers would sayo This is the paroxysm of desire, the vertigo of amour fOu, an invention particular to Resnais, rather than the 7

'ANNÉE

DERNIERE

A MARIENBAD

BFI

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unacceptable fantasy of rape described in the screenplay.... Is this not, índeed, the blinding spark which ultimate1y links the poles X and A?5 In 1968 Gilles Deleuze alluded in DifJérence et répétítíon to Resnais's film· as 'bearing witness to the particular techniques of repetitíon which the cínema employs, or invents'. 6 Fifteen years later thís analysis was extended and widened in the already classic pages of L'Image-temps devoted to 'undecídable alternatíves between layers of the past'.7 If Resnais's film has today entered history it is still by no means a familiar work. Furthermore, traces remain of the old rivalries between cinema lovers of a generation which, with every passing day, becomes more distanced íntime: these rivalríes are a sign of the passíons cinema excited, of the immaturity ofcertain 'commentators', and the blindness whích can strike spectators otherwise endowed with sensibility. The names in the L'Année derníere el Maríenbad credits are presented in relief letters on a grey background, as on certain visitíng or invitatíon cards. We are being summoned to a ceremony, or to a soirée: the characters are dressed accordingly, they will express themselves in rather formallanguage; weare invited to adopt thisposture in advance, 'out of pure convention'. There are works created which lean towards the formal, and sorne may find themboring and academic. Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of film-maker: Eisenstein or Sternherg on the one hand, Rossellini or Cassavetes on the other. Apropos of Alain Resnais's film Claude Ollier wrote: As to the interdictions pronounced in the name. of 'naturalness' and 'spontaneity', they have absolutely nomeaning. The only thing that counts is therigour (hence the strength of convictíon, hence the truth) with which thematerials are organised, whatever their origin and the degreeof binding them together.... It is by pushing the extrenle that Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet ha'\Te lmaha¡~ed to create an exemplari1y true work. 8 Resnais's film. The person was capable of produeing whilCh .ít p,erhaps stH! pr'od1llce:s) 1~. 1 "JJJ U> (")

Camera Operator Philippe Brun

Cast Giorgio Albertazzi

Assistant Camera

X

Guy Delattre

Delphine Seyrig A Sacha Pitoeff M Fram;:oise Bertin Luce Garcia-Ville Héléna Kornel Fram;:oise Spira Karin Toeche-Mittler Pierre Barbaud Wilhelm von Deek Jean Lanier Gérard Lorin Davide Montemuri GillesQuéant Gabriel Werner

2nd Assistant C¡¡mera F ran~oise Lauliac

Key Grips eo-produetíon of Terra-Film/Société Nouvelle des Films Cormoran/Précltel/ Como-Films/ArgosFilms/Les Films Tamara/ Cinetel/SilverFilms (France)/Cineriz (Rome)

Louis Balthazard, René Stocki

Producers

Art Director

Pierre Courau, Raymond Froment

Set Decorators

Production Manager

Gaffer Elie Fontanille

Stills Photography Georges Pierre

Editors Henri Colpi, Jasmine Chasney Jacques Saulnier

Unit Production Manager

Georges Glon, André Piltant, Jean-Jacques Fabre

Michel Choquet

Properties

Unit Manager

Charles Mérangel

Jean-Jacques Lecot

LéonSanz

Production Secretary

Ms Seyrig's Two Feather Costumes by

JanmeThaon

Bernard Evein

Director Alain Resnais

Ms Seyrig's Other Dresses

Assistant Director

Chanel

JeanLéon

KeyMake-up

2nd Assistant Directors

AlexMarcus

Volker Schlondorff, Florence Malraux

Eliane Marcus

Script Supervisor

Titles

Sylvette Baudrot

Jean Fouchet F.L.

Screenplay/Dialogues

Music

Alain Robbe-Grillet

Francís Seyrig

Director of Photography

Organist

Sacha Vierny

Marte Louíse Girod

Make-up Artist

Music Director André Girard

Sound Guy Villette, Jean-Claude Marchettí, René Renault, Jean Nény, Robert Cambourakis

8,531feet 94 minutes Black-and-white Anamorphic [Dyaliscope] Shot at PhotosonoreMarlgnan-Simo Studios, Pans and on 10cation m Munich and the chateaux Nymphenburg, Schleísshelm and Amalienburg over a perlOd of ten weeks in autumn 1960

L'Arcno. 31,1967. Armes, Roy, The Cinema of Alain Resnais (London: Zwemmer, 1968). Artseptno.I,January~March 1963. Benayoun, Robert, A lain Resnais, apenteur de l'imagznaire (Pam: Ramsay Poche Cinéma, 1985). Bory, Jean-Louís, Desyeuxpourvozr, vol. I (Paris: Ramsay Poche Cinéma, 1971). Brumus,Jacques-Bernard, 'Every Year in Maríenbad or The Discipline of Uncertamty', Sight and Sound vol. 31 no. 3, Summer 1962. Cahiersdu Cinémano.123, September 1961. Deleuze, Gilles, Différence et répétitlOn (Paris: PUF, 1968), DifJerence and Repetition, transo Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). - - , L'Image-temps (París: Éditions de Minuít, 1985), Cinema 2: The Time Image, transo Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (London: Athlone, 1989). Ishaghpour, Youssef, D'une ,mage al'autre (París: Denoel/Gonthier, 1982). Kreidl, John-Francis, A lazn Resnais (Boston: Twayne, 1977). Ltandrat-Guigues, Susan, 'Des statues et des films', Cinématheque no. 6, Autumn 1994.

Lourcelles, Jacques, DictlOnnatre du Cinéma (Paris: RobertLaffont/Bouquins, 1992). Monaco, James, A lain Resnais: The Role of Imagination (London: Secker and Warburg, 1976). Moudet, Michel, La Mise en scene comme langage (París: Henri Veyríer, 1987). Ollier, Claude, 'Ce soira Manenbad', NRF no. 106, 1 October 1961, pp. 711-19 and 906-12. - - , Souvemrs écran (Pans: Cabiers du Cinéma/Gallimard,1981). Premier Plan no. 18, 1961. Robbe-Grillet, Alam, L'Année demiere a Marienbad(Pans: ÉditlOnsde MinUlt, 1961). - - , Pour un nouveau Toman (Paris: Gallimard/ldées, 1963). Rodis-LeW1s, Genenvieve, Regards sur l'art (París: Beauchesne, 1993). Roob, Jean-Daniel, A lain ResnalS, qui $tesvous? (Lyon: La Manufacture, 1986). Thomas, F ran~oís, L 'Atetier d'Alain Resnais (París: Flammanon, 1989). Ward,John,AlainResnalSor, The Themeof Time (London: Secker and Warburg/BFI, 1968).

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Credits compiled by Markku Salmí, BFI Filmographic Unit Thepnnt of L'Année demiere aMaríenbad in the Natíonal Film and Televislon Archive was acquired specially for the 360 Classlc Feature Films prolect from the French negative (through the BFI distribution library)

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