Last Year at Marienbad
Encyclopedia
L'Année dernière à Marienbad (released in the USA as Last Year At Marienbad and in the UK as Last Year in Marienbad) is a 1961 French film directed by Alain Resnais
from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet
.
The film is famous for its enigmatic narrative structure, in which truth and fiction are difficult to distinguish, and the temporal and spatial relationship of the events is open to question. The dream-like nature of the film
has fascinated and baffled audiences and critics, some hailing it as a masterpiece, others finding it to be incomprehensible.
). Through ambiguous flashbacks and disorientating shifts of time and location, the film explores the relationships among the characters. Conversations and events are repeated in several places in the château and grounds, and there are numerous tracking shots of the château's corridors, with ambiguous voiceovers.
The characters are unnamed in the film; in the published screenplay, the woman is referred to as "A", the first man is "X", and the man who may be her husband is "M".
Robbe-Grillet wrote a screenplay which was very detailed, specifying not only the décor and gestures but also the placement and movement of the camera and the sequencing of shots in the editing. Resnais filmed the script with great fidelity, making only limited alterations which seemed necessary. Robbe-Grillet was not present during the filming. When he saw the rough-cut, he said that he found the film just as he had intended it, while recognising how much Resnais had added to make it work on the screen and to fill out what was absent from the script. Robbe-Grillet then published his screenplay, illustrated by shots from the film, as a "ciné-roman" (ciné-novel).
Despite the close correspondence between the written and filmed works, numerous differences between them have been identified. Two notable examples are the choice of music in the film (Francis Seyrig's score introduces extensive use of a solo organ), and a scene near the end of the film in which the screenplay explicitly describes a rape, whereas the film substitutes a series of repeated bleached-out travelling shots moving towards the woman. In subsequent statements by the two authors of the film, it was partly acknowledged that they did not entirely share the same vision of it.
Filming took place over a period of ten weeks between September and November 1960. The locations used for most of the interiors and the gardens were the châteaux of Schleissheim
, Nymphenburg
and Amalienburg
in and around Munich. Additional interior scenes were filmed in the Photosonore-Marignan-Simo studios in Paris. (No filming was done in the Czech spa town of Marienbad
- and the film does not allow the viewer to know with certainty which, if any, scenes are supposed to be located there.) Filming was in black-and-white in Dyaliscope wide-screen.
The film continually creates an ambiguity in the spatial and temporal aspects of what it shows, and creates uncertainty in the mind of the spectator about the causal relationships between events. This may be achieved through the editing, giving apparently incompatible information in consecutive shots, or within a shot which seems to show impossible juxtapositions, or by means of repetitions of events in different settings and décor. These ambiguities are matched by contradictions in the narrator's voiceover commentary. Among the notable images in the film is a scene in which two characters (and the camera) rush out of the château and are faced with a tableau of figures arranged in a geometric garden; although the people cast long dramatic shadows, the trees in the garden do not.
The manner in which the film is edited challenged the established classical style of narrative construction. It allowed the themes of time and the mind and the interaction of past and present to be explored in an original way. As spatial and temporal continuity is destroyed by its methods of filming and editing, the film offers instead a "mental continuity", a continuity of thought.
In determining the visual appearance of the film, Resnais said that he wanted to recreate "a certain style of silent cinema", and his direction as well as the actors' make-up sought to produce this atmosphere. He even asked Eastman Kodak if they could supply an old-fashioned filmstock that would 'bloom' or 'halo' to create the look of a silent film (they couldn't). Resnais showed his costume designer photographs from L'Inhumaine
and L'Argent
, for which great fashion designers of the 1920s had created the costumes. He also asked members of his team to look at other silent films including Pabst's Pandora's Box
: he wanted Delphine Seyrig's appearance and manner to resemble that of Louise Brooks
. Most of Seyrig's dresses in the film were designed by Chanel
. The style of certain silent films is also suggested by the manner in which the characters who populate the hotel are mostly seen in artificial poses, as if frozen in time, rather than behaving naturalistically.
The films which immediately preceded and followed Marienbad in Resnais's career showed a political engagement with contemporary issues (the atomic bomb, the aftermath of the Occupation in France, and the then taboo subject of the war in Algeria); Marienbad however was seen to take a completely different direction and to focus principally on style. Commenting on this departure, Resnais said: "I was making this film at a time when I think, rightly, that one could not make a film, in France, without speaking about the Algerian war. Indeed I wonder whether the closed and stifling atmosphere of L'Année does not result from those contradictions."
In 1963 the writer and film-maker Ado Kyrou
declared the film a total triumph in his influential Le Surréalisme au cinéma , recognizing the ambiguous environment and obscure motives within the film as representing many of the concerns of surrealism
in narrative cinema. Another early supporter, the actor and surrealist Jacques Brunius
, declared that "Marienbad is the greatest film ever made".
Less reverently, Marienbad received an entry in The Fifty Worst Films of All Time
, by Harry Medved, with Randy Dreyfuss and Michael Medved
. The authors lampooned the film's surrealistic style and quoted numerous critics who found it to be pretentious and/or incomprehensible. The film critic Pauline Kael
called it "the high-fashion experimental film, the snow job at the ice palace... back at the no-fun party for non-people".
The movie inspired a brief craze for the Nim
variation played by the characters.
Some have noted that the film has the atmosphere and the form of a dream, that the structure of the film may be understood by the analogy of a recurring dream, or even that the man's meeting with the woman is the memory (or dream) of a dream.
Others have heeded, at least as a starting point, the indications given by Robbe-Grillet in the introduction to his screenplay: "Two attitudes are then possible: either the spectator will try to reconstitute some 'Cartesian' scheme - the most linear, the most rational he can devise - and this spectator will certainly find the film difficult if not incomprehensible; or else the spectator will let himself be carried along by the extraordinary images in front of him [...] and to this spectator, the film will seem the easiest he has ever seen: a film addressed exclusively to his sensibility, to his faculties of sight, hearing, feeling."
Robbe-Grillet offered a further suggestion of how one might view the work: "The whole film, as a matter of fact, is the story of a persuading ["une persuasion"]: it deals with a reality which the hero creates out of his own vision, out of his own words."
Resnais for his part gave a more abstract explanation of the film's purpose: "For me this film is an attempt, still very crude and very primitive, to approach the complexity of thought, of its processes."
at the 1961 Venice Film Festival
. In 1962 it won the critics' award in the category Best Film of the Syndicat Français de la Critique de cinéma
in France. The film was selected as the French entry for the Best Foreign Language Film
at the 34th Academy Awards
in 1962, but was not accepted as a nominee. However, it was nominated for the 1963 Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay (Alain Robbe-Grillet
) and it was also nominated for a Hugo Award
as Best Dramatic Presentation.
The film was refused entry to the Cannes Film Festival
because the director, Alain Resnais, had signed Jean-Paul Sartre
's Manifesto of the 121
against the Algeria War.
, Marguerite Duras
, and Jacques Rivette
to international figures like Ingmar Bergman
and Federico Fellini
. Stanley Kubrick's The Shining
and David Lynch's Inland Empire
are two films which are cited with particular frequency as showing the influence of Marienbad.
Peter Greenaway
said that Marienbad had been the most important influence upon his own film-making (and he himself established a close working relationship with its cinematographer Sacha Vierny
).
The film's visual style has also been imitated in many TV commercials and fashion photography.
The music video for "To the End", a 1994 single by British rock group Blur
, is based on the film.
This film was the main inspiration for Karl Lagerfeld
's Chanel
Spring-Summer 2011 collection. Lagerfeld's show was complete with a fountain and a modern replica of the film's famous garden. Since costumes for this film were done by Coco Chanel
, Lagerfeld drew his inspiration from the film and combined the film's gardens with those at Versailles
.
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice...
.
The film is famous for its enigmatic narrative structure, in which truth and fiction are difficult to distinguish, and the temporal and spatial relationship of the events is open to question. The dream-like nature of the film
Oneiric (film theory)
In a film theory context, the term oneiric refers to the depiction of dream-like states in films, or to the use of the metaphor of a dream or the dream-state to analyze a film. The connection between dreams and films has been long established; "The dream factory" “...has become a household...
has fascinated and baffled audiences and critics, some hailing it as a masterpiece, others finding it to be incomprehensible.
Plot
At a social gathering at a château or baroque hotel, a man approaches a woman. He claims they met the year before at Marienbad and is convinced that she is waiting there for him. The woman insists they have never met. A second man, who may be the woman's husband, repeatedly asserts his dominance over the first man, including beating him several times at a mathematical game (a version of NimNim
Nim is a mathematical game of strategy in which two players take turns removing objects from distinct heaps. On each turn, a player must remove at least one object, and may remove any number of objects provided they all come from the same heap....
). Through ambiguous flashbacks and disorientating shifts of time and location, the film explores the relationships among the characters. Conversations and events are repeated in several places in the château and grounds, and there are numerous tracking shots of the château's corridors, with ambiguous voiceovers.
The characters are unnamed in the film; in the published screenplay, the woman is referred to as "A", the first man is "X", and the man who may be her husband is "M".
Cast
- Giorgio AlbertazziGiorgio AlbertazziGiorgio Albertazzi is an Italian actor and film director.Born in San Martino a Mensola Albertazzi joined the Italian Social Republic and reached the rank of lieutenant. After their defeat, he spent two years in prison for collaborating...
, as the man - Delphine SeyrigDelphine SeyrigDelphine Claire Beltiane Seyrig was a stage and film actress and a film director.-Early life:...
, as the woman - Sacha PitoëffSacha PitoëffSacha Pitoëff was a French film actor and theater director.Born in Geneva, Switzerland, Pitoëff played his first film role in 1952. Appearing in over 50 movies, he is probably best known for his performance in Alain Resnais' enigmatic Last Year at Marienbad , as a character known simply as "M"...
, and the second man, who may be her husband.
Production
L'Année dernière à Marienbad was created out of an unusual collaboration between its writer Alain Robbe-Grillet and its director Alain Resnais. Robbe-Grillet described its basis: "Alain Resnais and I were able to collaborate only because we had seen the film in the same way from the start, and not just in the same general outlines but exactly, in the construction of the least detail as in its total architecture. What I wrote might have been what was already in [his] mind; what he added during the shooting was what I might have written. ...Paradoxically enough, and thanks to the perfect identity of our conceptions, we almost always worked separately."Robbe-Grillet wrote a screenplay which was very detailed, specifying not only the décor and gestures but also the placement and movement of the camera and the sequencing of shots in the editing. Resnais filmed the script with great fidelity, making only limited alterations which seemed necessary. Robbe-Grillet was not present during the filming. When he saw the rough-cut, he said that he found the film just as he had intended it, while recognising how much Resnais had added to make it work on the screen and to fill out what was absent from the script. Robbe-Grillet then published his screenplay, illustrated by shots from the film, as a "ciné-roman" (ciné-novel).
Despite the close correspondence between the written and filmed works, numerous differences between them have been identified. Two notable examples are the choice of music in the film (Francis Seyrig's score introduces extensive use of a solo organ), and a scene near the end of the film in which the screenplay explicitly describes a rape, whereas the film substitutes a series of repeated bleached-out travelling shots moving towards the woman. In subsequent statements by the two authors of the film, it was partly acknowledged that they did not entirely share the same vision of it.
Filming took place over a period of ten weeks between September and November 1960. The locations used for most of the interiors and the gardens were the châteaux of Schleissheim
Schleissheim Palace
The Schleissheim Palace actually comprises three palaces in a grand baroque park in the village of Oberschleißheim near Munich, Bavaria, Germany. The palace was the summer residence of the rulers of Bavaria.-Old Schleissheim Palace:...
, Nymphenburg
Nymphenburg Palace
The Nymphenburg Palace , i.e. "Nymph's Castle", is a Baroque palace in Munich, Bavaria, southern Germany. The palace was the main summer residence of the rulers of Bavaria.-History:...
and Amalienburg
Amalienburg
The Amalienburg is a small hunting lodge in the Nymphenburg Palace of Munich, southern Germany. It was constructed in 1734-1739 by François de Cuvilliés, in Rococo style, for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII and his wife, Maria Amalia of Austria....
in and around Munich. Additional interior scenes were filmed in the Photosonore-Marignan-Simo studios in Paris. (No filming was done in the Czech spa town of Marienbad
Mariánské Lázne
Mariánské Lázně is a spa town in the Karlovy Vary Region of the Czech Republic. The town, surrounded by green mountains, is a mosaic of parks and noble houses...
- and the film does not allow the viewer to know with certainty which, if any, scenes are supposed to be located there.) Filming was in black-and-white in Dyaliscope wide-screen.
Style
The manner in which the film is edited challenged the established classical style of narrative construction. It allowed the themes of time and the mind and the interaction of past and present to be explored in an original way. As spatial and temporal continuity is destroyed by its methods of filming and editing, the film offers instead a "mental continuity", a continuity of thought.
In determining the visual appearance of the film, Resnais said that he wanted to recreate "a certain style of silent cinema", and his direction as well as the actors' make-up sought to produce this atmosphere. He even asked Eastman Kodak if they could supply an old-fashioned filmstock that would 'bloom' or 'halo' to create the look of a silent film (they couldn't). Resnais showed his costume designer photographs from L'Inhumaine
L'Inhumaine
L'Inhumaine is a 1924 French drama-science fiction film directed by Marcel L'Herbier. It was notable for its experimental techniques and for the collaboration of many leading practitioners in the decorative arts, architecture and music...
and L'Argent
L'Argent (1928 film)
L'Argent is a French silent film directed in 1928 by Marcel L'Herbier. The film was adapted from the novel L'Argent by Émile Zola, and it portrays the world of banking and the stock market in Paris in the 1920s.-Background:...
, for which great fashion designers of the 1920s had created the costumes. He also asked members of his team to look at other silent films including Pabst's Pandora's Box
Pandora's Box (film)
Pandora's Box is a 1929 German silent melodrama film based on Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora . Directed by Austrian filmmaker Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the film stars Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, and Francis Lederer...
: he wanted Delphine Seyrig's appearance and manner to resemble that of Louise Brooks
Louise Brooks
Mary Louise Brooks , generally known by her stage name Louise Brooks, was an American dancer, model, showgirl and silent film actress, noted for popularizing the bobbed haircut. Brooks is best known for her three feature roles including two G. W...
. Most of Seyrig's dresses in the film were designed by Chanel
Coco Chanel
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist thought, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion. She was the founder of one of the most famous fashion brands, Chanel...
. The style of certain silent films is also suggested by the manner in which the characters who populate the hotel are mostly seen in artificial poses, as if frozen in time, rather than behaving naturalistically.
The films which immediately preceded and followed Marienbad in Resnais's career showed a political engagement with contemporary issues (the atomic bomb, the aftermath of the Occupation in France, and the then taboo subject of the war in Algeria); Marienbad however was seen to take a completely different direction and to focus principally on style. Commenting on this departure, Resnais said: "I was making this film at a time when I think, rightly, that one could not make a film, in France, without speaking about the Algerian war. Indeed I wonder whether the closed and stifling atmosphere of L'Année does not result from those contradictions."
Reception
Critical response to the film was divided from the outset and has remained so. Controversy was fuelled when Robbe-Grillet and Resnais appeared to give contradictory answers to the question whether the man and woman had actually met at Marienbad last year or not; this was used as a means of attacking the film by those who disliked it.In 1963 the writer and film-maker Ado Kyrou
Adonis Kyrou
Adonis Kyrou was a Greek filmmaker and writer.Residing in France, where he was a critic, filmmaker, and author of L'Âge d'or de la carte postale , Amour - érotisme & cinéma and Le surréalisme au cinéma , the last two published by Eric Losfeld's publishing house Le Terrain Vague.He was a...
declared the film a total triumph in his influential Le Surréalisme au cinéma , recognizing the ambiguous environment and obscure motives within the film as representing many of the concerns of surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
in narrative cinema. Another early supporter, the actor and surrealist Jacques Brunius
Jacques B. Brunius
Jacques B. Brunius, French actor, director and writer, was born Jacques Henri Cottance in Paris on September 16, 1906, died Exeter, Devon , on April 24, 1967. He was cremated in Sidmouth, with a tribute by Mesens....
, declared that "Marienbad is the greatest film ever made".
Less reverently, Marienbad received an entry in The Fifty Worst Films of All Time
The Fifty Worst Films of All Time
The Fifty Worst Films of All Time is a 1978 book by Harry Medved, with Randy Dreyfuss and Michael Medved. This book represents choices for the 50 worst sound films ever made, in alphabetical order...
, by Harry Medved, with Randy Dreyfuss and Michael Medved
Michael Medved
Michael Medved is an American radio host, author, political commentator and film critic. His Seattle, Washington-based nationally syndicated talk show, The Michael Medved Show, airs throughout the U.S...
. The authors lampooned the film's surrealistic style and quoted numerous critics who found it to be pretentious and/or incomprehensible. The film critic Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
called it "the high-fashion experimental film, the snow job at the ice palace... back at the no-fun party for non-people".
The movie inspired a brief craze for the Nim
Nim
Nim is a mathematical game of strategy in which two players take turns removing objects from distinct heaps. On each turn, a player must remove at least one object, and may remove any number of objects provided they all come from the same heap....
variation played by the characters.
Interpretations
Numerous explanations of the 'story' have been put forward: that it is a version of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth; that it represents the relationship between patient and psychoanalyst; that it all takes places in the woman's mind; that it all takes place in the man's mind, and depicts his refusal to acknowledge that he has killed the woman he loved; that the characters are ghosts or dead souls in limbo; etc.Some have noted that the film has the atmosphere and the form of a dream, that the structure of the film may be understood by the analogy of a recurring dream, or even that the man's meeting with the woman is the memory (or dream) of a dream.
Others have heeded, at least as a starting point, the indications given by Robbe-Grillet in the introduction to his screenplay: "Two attitudes are then possible: either the spectator will try to reconstitute some 'Cartesian' scheme - the most linear, the most rational he can devise - and this spectator will certainly find the film difficult if not incomprehensible; or else the spectator will let himself be carried along by the extraordinary images in front of him [...] and to this spectator, the film will seem the easiest he has ever seen: a film addressed exclusively to his sensibility, to his faculties of sight, hearing, feeling."
Robbe-Grillet offered a further suggestion of how one might view the work: "The whole film, as a matter of fact, is the story of a persuading ["une persuasion"]: it deals with a reality which the hero creates out of his own vision, out of his own words."
Resnais for his part gave a more abstract explanation of the film's purpose: "For me this film is an attempt, still very crude and very primitive, to approach the complexity of thought, of its processes."
Awards
The film won the Golden LionGolden Lion
Il Leone d’Oro is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most distinguished prizes...
at the 1961 Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
. In 1962 it won the critics' award in the category Best Film of the Syndicat Français de la Critique de cinéma
French Syndicate of Cinema Critics
The French Syndicate of Cinema Critics has awarded 4 prizes - the Prix Méliès annually since 1946 to the best French film of the year. The Prix Léon Moussinac, awarded to the Best Foreign Film category was added in 1967...
in France. The film was selected as the French entry for the Best Foreign Language Film
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
at the 34th Academy Awards
34th Academy Awards
The 34th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 1961, were held on April 9, 1962 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California. They were hosted by Bob Hope; this was the seventh time Hope hosted the Oscars...
in 1962, but was not accepted as a nominee. However, it was nominated for the 1963 Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay (Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice...
) and it was also nominated for a Hugo Award
Hugo Award
The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...
as Best Dramatic Presentation.
The film was refused entry to the Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
because the director, Alain Resnais, had signed Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
's Manifesto of the 121
Manifesto of the 121
The Manifesto of the 121 was an open letter signed by 121 intellectuals and published on 6 September 1960 in the magazine Vérité-Liberté. It called on the French government, then headed by the Gaullist Michel Debré, and public opinion to recognise the Algerian War as a legitimate struggle for...
against the Algeria War.
Influence
The impact of L'Année dernière à Marienbad upon other film-makers has been widely recognised and variously illustrated, extending from French directors such as Agnès VardaAgnès Varda
Agnès Varda is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School. Her movies, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style....
, Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras was a French writer and film director.-Background:...
, and Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette is a French film director. His most well known films include Celine and Julie Go Boating, La Belle Noiseuse and the cult film Out 1....
to international figures like Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
and Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
. Stanley Kubrick's The Shining
The Shining (film)
The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and Danny Lloyd. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. A writer, Jack Torrance, takes a job as an...
and David Lynch's Inland Empire
Inland Empire (film)
Inland Empire, sometimes styled as INLAND EMPIRE, is a 2006 mystery film written and directed by David Lynch. It was his first feature-length film since 2001's Mulholland Drive, and shares many similarities with that film. It premiered in Italy at the Venice Film Festival on September 6, 2006...
are two films which are cited with particular frequency as showing the influence of Marienbad.
Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular...
said that Marienbad had been the most important influence upon his own film-making (and he himself established a close working relationship with its cinematographer Sacha Vierny
Sacha Vierny
Sacha Vierny was a French cinematographer. He was born in Bois-le-Roi, Seine-et-Marne, Île-de-France, France, and died in Paris, France, at the age of 81...
).
The film's visual style has also been imitated in many TV commercials and fashion photography.
The music video for "To the End", a 1994 single by British rock group Blur
Blur (band)
Blur is an English alternative rock band. Formed in London in 1989 as Seymour, the group consists of singer Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree. Blur's debut album Leisure incorporated the sounds of Madchester and shoegazing...
, is based on the film.
This film was the main inspiration for Karl Lagerfeld
Karl Lagerfeld
Karl Lagerfeld is a German fashion designer, artist and photographer based in Paris. He has collaborated on a variety of fashion and art related projects, most notably as head designer and creative director for the fashion house Chanel...
's Chanel
Chanel
Chanel S.A. is a French fashion house founded by the couturier Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, well established in haute couture, specializing in luxury goods . She gained the name "Coco" while maintaining a career as a singer at a café in France...
Spring-Summer 2011 collection. Lagerfeld's show was complete with a fountain and a modern replica of the film's famous garden. Since costumes for this film were done by Coco Chanel
Coco Chanel
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist thought, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion. She was the founder of one of the most famous fashion brands, Chanel...
, Lagerfeld drew his inspiration from the film and combined the film's gardens with those at Versailles
Gardens of Versailles
The Gardens of Versailles occupy part of what was once the Domaine royal de Versailles, the royal demesne of the château of Versailles. Situated to the west of the palace, the gardens cover some 800 hectares of land, much of which is landscaped in the classic French Garden style perfected here by...
.
Further reading
- Leutrat, Jean-Louis. L'Année dernière à Marienbad. (London: British Film Institute, 2000).
- Powell, Dilys. The Golden Screen. (London: Pavilion Books, 1989) pp.183–184. (Review published in The Sunday Times, 1962.)
- Powell, Dilys. The Dilys Powell Film Reader. (Manchester: Carcanet, 1991) pp.372–373. (Review published in The Sunday Times, 1962, preceded by notes made during Sep. 1961 - Feb. 1962.)
- Robbe-Grillet, Alain. L'Année dernière à Marienbad: ciné-roman. (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1961). English translation: Last Year at Marienbad: a Ciné-Novel; translated from the French by Richard Howard. (London: John Calder, 1962).
External links
- Film review by Roger Ebert, 30 May 1999. [Retrieved 11 November 2011]
- Review of Jean-Louis Leutrat's monograph, "L'Année dernière à Marienbad", in Film-Philosophy, v.9, no.39 (July 2005). [Retrieved 11 November 2011]
- Marcel in Marienbad, [an essay] by Mark Rappaport, in Rouge (2003). [Retrieved 11 November 2011]
- Article by Shannon Gramas (25 May 2010), at Spectrum Culture. [Retrieved 11 November 2011]