L'annee Derniere a Marienbad = Last Year in Marienbad (Cinemascope Print)

Robbe-Grillet described ‘Marienbad’ as ‘the story of a persuading’ centred on a romantic triangle ending in violence, constructed in the mind of X, one of the three. To Resnais, ‘Marienbad’ looks like a statue and sounds like an opera’. The images of the chateau are those of a labyrinth of fake trails, variants, failures and repetitions, destroying spatial and temporal logic in a film about the processes of memory that locates everything in the present tense. In keeping with Robbe-Grillet’s rejection of conventional interior monologue the emphasis is not on what X is thinking and feeling but on what he ‘sees’. With a hint of playfulness Resnais’ treatment of Robbe-Grillet’s script suggests a meditation on narrative tyranny, a modernist demonstration of narrative cinema as process: instead of the image revealing the world, it reveals itself. Awards: Best Film Venice Film Festival (Mostra) 1961 ; Prix Georges Melies 1961 ; Prix Andre Bazin 1961.

Credits: Producers, Pierre Courau, Raymond Froment ; director, Alain Resnais ; writer, Alain Robbe-Grillet ; photography, Sacha Vierny ; music, Francis Seyrig ; art direction, Jacques Saulnier ; assistant director, Volker Schloendorff.
Cast: Giorgio Albertazzi, Delphine Seyrig, Sacha Pitoeff.