Last Year at Marienbad

Directed by Alain Resnais

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Release Year: 1961
Running time: 95
Country: France
Language: French
Subjects:
$31.96 - Classroom Rights
MSRP: $39.95
Directed by: Alain Resnais
Writer: Alain Robbe-Grillet

Last Year in Marienbad (1961) is a hypnotically beautiful puzzle box of a film, and one of the most influential in history. Alan Resnais's sensuous tracking shots and Delphine Seyrig's iconic Chanel gowns have become part of the cinematic lexicon, and can now be seen in a gorgeous 4K restoration from StudioCanal. In a large international hotel in the European resort town of Marienbad, with a sumptuous but austere décor-a marble universe with gold paneling, statues, and stuff servants-the rich, anonymous, idle clientele circulates. A man (Giorgio Albertazzi) is convinced he met an enigmatic woman (Seyrig, Jeanne Dielman) the previous year at the same location, and perhaps had a flirtation. A second man (Sacha Pitoëff, Inferno), possibly the woman's lover or husband, repeatedly intimidates the first man. Their relations unfold through flashback shards that never quite fit into place, their lives a hall of mirrors that never reveal a true self.

Nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards and Nominated for the Best Film at the BAFTA Awards. Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

 

Reviews

"Remains one of cinema's glorious enigmas, endlessly compelling and intriguing."
- The Los Angeles Times
 
"To even talk of a story is nonsensical, since a central aesthetic of the film involves the effects of fantasy, time and subjective memory on human consciousness. Marienbad takes place in a heightened, sci-fi nightmare world where knowing, believing"
- The Chicago Tribune
 
"A pioneering, essential work of arthouse cinema that remains as enrapturing and illusive as ever."
- The Digital Fix
 

"Marienbad is elegantly hermetic, a ravishing waxworks that has stillness at its heart."

- The Boston Globe
 

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