Film Review: Hollywood Structure and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad

Figure 1.

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In a Czech resort, a stylish clientele dresses with its still-life presence a seemingly ever-lasting soirée. In the midst of conversations, an unnamed man approaches a woman. He claims they have met before; she denies. What follows is an ambiguous account of their possible clandestine affair, which may or may not have taken place last year, in this same baroque hotel, perhaps…

Released in 1961, Alain Resnais’ L’Année dernière à Marienbad is a prime example of cinematographic endeavours resolute to abolish the codes set by Golden Age Hollywood. Co-written by Alain Robbe-Grillet, towering figure of the Nouveau Roman, it is easy to imagine why in the narrative spectrum, its screenplay proves to be closest to the anti-plot. 

Though the surface matter remains classical – a glamorous hotel, a lover, a loved one, an imperious husband – its approach fundamentally rejects the temporality that structures most films. Instead, Marienbad articulates itself around the subjective time of thought, turning increasingly inconsistent as timelines and plot get fragmented. 

With this feature, director and writer both dreamed of achieving a film-object "whose first reel would be impossible to find”. By blurring fantasies with reminiscences, the pair takes evident pleasure in preventing the audience from constructing direct, logical links between scenes. Such level of ambiguity is reached on-screen through incompatible juxtapositions in the editing or, by means of off-camera alterations, within the same take. Pieces of dialogue, movements and events can similarly be subject to repetitions in different décors and angles. In an effort to disrupt spatial continuity as well, landmarks appear to move locations at the whim of a thought. Those surreal disparities are deepened by contradictions in the narrator’s voiceover, which grows more and more unreliable as it roams around the labyrinth of his mind, meeting impasses and having to revisit the same place multiple times. In this regard, the filmmaker's exploration of memory and oblivion seems to hang on the idea of cycle, since its opening foreshadows the end. However the end itself, in place of offering a resolution, is told in the past tense; as if the lovers’ flight happened last year, suspended in time, forever doomed to be repeated.

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But the picture does not limit itself to challenging linearity, further marking a deliberate departure from traditional storytelling techniques. This particularly shows in the film’s semblance of exposition, where a detailed audio description of the surroundings loops on itself, losing the meaning of its words in the high ceilings of the château. The same misleading effect is obtained when the camera, formerly gazing at the architecture, goes on to linger over the customers who populate the hotel; just as we think it has focused on the story’s protagonists, the shot changes, moves along and fixates itself on other faces and conversations. In the end, Resnais unexpectedly centers his unconventional tale on two characters previously portrayed as background extras.  

With the same irreverence, the film additionally distinguishes itself in its use of the soundtrack. Whereas dialogue is considered a common device to move the plot forward, exchanges between characters in Marienbad are often insignificant and altogether forgettable. Resnais and Robbe-Grillet reinforce this idea by repeatedly cutting into conversations and leaving them unfinished. On occasions, voice tracks will even be played over footage of silent characters, or seemingly talking characters might find themselves stripped of their voice. The content of speech is thus implied to be irrelevant, as it is rather the overall movement, rhythm, repetition or break in repetitions that gives emotional meaning and defines moments in L'Année Dernière à Marienbad.

Illustrations.

Figure 1. Impossible Shadows Still. (1961) From: L'Année Dernière à Marienbad. Directed by: Resnais, A. [Film still] France, Italy: Cocinor. At: http://www.pileface.com/sollers/spip.php?article601 (Accessed on 23/10/15).

Figure 2. L'Année Dernière à Marienbad (1961)  [Poster] At: http://movieposters.2038.net/movieid-271(Accessed on 23/10/15).

Figure 3. Interior Still. (1961) From: L'Année Dernière à Marienbad. Directed by: Resnais, A. [Film still] France, Italy: Cocinor. At: http://www.moviemeter.nl/forum/7/4831/390 (Accessed on 23/10/15).