SYNOPSIS: Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais’ epochal Last Year at Marienbad (L’année dernière à Marienbad) has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. Written by radical master of the New Novel Alain Robbe-Grillet, this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in telling its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-filled château they now find themselves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings, diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais’ investigation into the nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story.
| Director | Alain Resnais |
| Screenplay | Alain Robbe-Grillet |
| Producer | Pierre Courau and Raymond Froment |
| Music | Francis Seyrig |
| Cinematography | Sacha Vierny |
| Editing | Jasmine Chasney and Henri Colpi |
| Production design | Jacques Saulnier |
| Costumes | Coco Chanel and Bernard Evein |
| Set decoration | Jean-Jacques Fabre, Georges Glon and André Piltant |
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:
By June 23, 2009
So much critical ink has been shed over Last Year at Marienbad that one might wonder if the flood of commentary, once receded, would take the film along with it. Alain Resnais’ Read more »
By June 24, 2009
The following tribute to Sacha Vierny by Alain Resnais (pictured together above, Resnais left) was published in the October 2001 issue of Positif. It is based on an interview conducted by Read more »
By April 22, 2009
Some of you might have seen the news item on our website regarding the Jacques Tati “centennial-plus” and the exhibits around Paris paying homage to the inventive filmmaker. I had the good fortune Read more »
May 24, 2010
Alain Resnais’s 1961 French New Wave masterpiece Last Year at Marienbad has long been one of cinema’s most magnificently inscrutable films, but at least one of its mysteries has now been solved. The actress Read more »
By June 19, 2009
Forty-six years ago, Last Year at Marienbad opened in London. Resnais and Robbe-Grillet came over for the press screening, and I chatted to them in the lobby of the now defunct Cameo-Poly art house Read more »
November 19, 2009
It’s well known that Alain Resnais’ beautiful New Wave puzzle Last Year at Marienbad was as fashion-forward as it was artistically progressive. But it surprised us to learn that this high-concept masterpiece Read more »
July 03, 2009
It’s often said that there’s never been a movie quite like Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad. But in paying tribute to this French New Wave landmark on the occasion of its release in Criterion Read more »
