Back in the day when cocktail-party chatter used to revolve around the possible meanings of perplexing art films, Alain Resnais' 1961 movie, "Last Year at Marienbad," was an unrivaled conversation starter. Here was a film in which nothing is what it seems and everything seems to take place at once.
Some declared it a milestone in the evolution of storytelling and formal filmmaking. Others saw only the emperor's new clothes -- although, given the dazzling succession of Coco Chanel outfits modeled by its fashion-plate heroine, what clothes they were.
Out this week in a two-disc edition from the Criterion Collection, "Marienbad," with its solemn mannerisms, geometric topiary and cast of waxwork zombies, has inspired more parodies than any other art-house hit, save perhaps for Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" (also just reissued by Criterion). But what often goes unacknowledged is the edge of awareness beneath the movie's straight-faced absurdity.
On one hand, it's a proudly unsolvable enigma, an attempt to resist chronology and rational analysis and instead to mimic the associative flow of dream logic. On the other, it's the driest of high-concept comedies: an elaboration on the old "Don't I know you from somewhere?" pickup line.
In a vast hotel dripping with Rococo trimmings, a nameless woman (identified in the credits as A and played by the gorgeous Delphine Seyrig) is pursued by a nameless man (known as X and played by Giorgio Albertazzi), who tries to convince her they'd met the previous year. He tells her that they had agreed to this rendezvous and that she had promised to leave her companion (a.k.a. M, played by the sunken-cheeked Sacha Pitoeff).
A claims not to remember; X keeps pressing his case, with some success. But is this persistent seducer drawing forth a repressed memory or implanting a false one?
Shot in sumptuous widescreen black-and-white by Sacha Vierny, one of the great cinematographers of his generation, the movie flashes back and forward, merging past and present. The overall effect, compounded by X's repetitive voice-over and an eerily constant pipe-organ drone, is of an eternal loop. There are no references to the outside world. The setting suggests a sanatorium for the idle rich, complete with shooting gallery, ballroom dances and parlor games.
