View Full Version : Last Year At Marienbad?
anyone know if this has been released on any region?
...earce... on a horribly bad R1 DVD from image...
http://www.dvdangle.com/reviews/review.php?Id=2347
. . . ! ! ! A V O I D ! ! ! . . .
. . . :o . . .
greg_godwin
05-01-2005, 08:03
I want to bump this thread back up... any chance of a new DVD release of this sorely neglected classic for 2005? again, any region. This has deserved a re-release for quite some time.
(special edition with commentary by Renais and Robbe-Grillet would be nice too ;-)
Moving to Classic Cinema & DVD Forum
DanWilde1966
05-01-2005, 10:51
I'd love a release of Hiroshima Mon Amour as well. Marienbad has always struck me a visually beautiful but emotionally empty - the sort of cerebral shenannigans that Robbe-Grillet indulged in his novels. Hiroshima Mon Amour, however, is much more beautifully emotional. To refer to another thread, it has loads of profoundly weepy moments, and more sense of the enigmatic in any one of its frames than Marienbad achieved in its whole (rather self-conscious) running time. Marienbad is brilliant, however, and if a decent transfer appeared, I would snap it up.
anephric
05-01-2005, 11:29
The whole point of Marienbad is that it's repudiatory... that's its raison d'etre, surely? It denies you involvement of any kind (emotional, empathic, narrative) in order to laminate the spectator and the film... to rebuke classical levels of expectation.
I'd love a release of Hiroshima Mon Amour as well.
Something like this? (http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=196) ;)
One of my all-time fave DVDs for some reason... if it's cheap in CD-Wow's Crit offer I sternly recommend it.
As for Marienbad, I would actually credit the film with a certain emotional charge - could just be that it massages the right spots in my particular psyche, but I do find the haunting undercurrents of damage and loss quite affecting. Never made me cry, though...
DanWilde1966
05-01-2005, 13:35
The whole point of Marienbad is that it's repudiatory... that's it's raison d'etre, surely? It denies you involvement of any kind (emotional, empathic, narrative) in order to laminate the spectator and the film... to rebuke classical levels of expectation.
Sure. The same is true of the novels... The Erasers. Jealousy. Recollections of the Golden Triangle. Djinn. Topology of a Phantom City. In the Labyrinth. The Voyeur... I have read the lot over the years. I guess I am a sucker for the more old-fashioned emotional, empathetic, narrative. I admire the brilliance of something like Bergman's Persona, for example, and am aware it is as full of emotion as an atom is full of energy - yet on the vast majority of occasions, I opt for the more traditional three-act classical narrative. :thumbs:
greg_godwin
05-01-2005, 17:52
Sure. The same is true of the novels... The Erasers. Jealousy. Recollections of the Golden Triangle. Djinn. Topology of a Phantom City. In the Labyrinth. The Voyeur... I have read the lot over the years. I guess I am a sucker for the more old-fashioned emotional, empathetic, narrative. I admire the brilliance of something like Bergman's Persona, for example, and am aware it is as full of emotion as an atom is full of energy - yet on the vast majority of occasions, I opt for the more traditional three-act classical narrative. :thumbs:
Marienbad is Robbe-Grillet through and through, but hence its genius - "For a New Novel"/use of an objective narrative. seems to me that film is the ideal medium for some of these theories (and Robbe-Grillet reflects filmic conditions on the novel). but as mentioned Hiroshima is available and more widely recognised... here's hoping Criterion see fit to issue this.
Much as I love "Last Year At Marienbad", and it's one of my favourite films, I can't abide "Hiroshima Mon Amour". Complete twaddle from start to finish. If any woman spent as much time whittering on and repeating herself while in bed with me as this one does, I'd have got up, got dressed and left several hours earlier. The whole story about what happened to her at the hands of those who can't understand her passion is on the same level as your average Catherine Cookson novel - or, worse, "Ryan's Daughter" - and the attempt to link all this to the bombing of Hiroshima is clumsy and tasteless. Not one of my more detailed reviews but I've got flu so it'll have to do :(
DanWilde1966
06-01-2005, 06:48
I can't abide "Hiroshima Mon Amour". Complete twaddle from start to finish. If any woman spent as much time whittering on and repeating herself while in bed with me as this one does, I'd have got up, got dressed and left several hours earlier. The whole story about what happened to her at the hands of those who can't understand her passion is on the same level as your average Catherine Cookson novel - or, worse, "Ryan's Daughter" - and the attempt to link all this to the bombing of Hiroshima is clumsy and tasteless. Not one of my more detailed reviews but I've got flu so it'll have to do :(
Have you actually read any Catherine Cookson? :suspect: Surely, it is possible to make similar kinds of remarks about other great filmic romances: "the attempt to link all this to the [American Civil War] is clumsy and tasteless..." (Gone With the Wind). The film is set in Hiroshima, a mere fourteen years after the holocaust there, so the bomb would surely have to feature in the story on some level. I find the romance between the actress and the architect to be utterly enigmatic and compelling, leading to a final shot (involving nouvelle roman-style verbal repetition) that resolves nothing. I don't find anything in the film clumsy. The opening sequence (which, I assume, is what you find particularly offensive), is a shocking way of introducing the setting and the relationship in one stroke. I for one find it extremely cinematic. I cannot see any way in which it could be perceived as "tasteless". Remember, the film was one of the first nouvelle vague movies - contemporary with A Bout de Souffle and Le Quatre Cent Coups. The likes of Truffaut, Resnais and Godard were in turn influenced by modernism, and novels like Faulkner's The Wild Palms in particular: works that splintered narrative, or at least told stories with beginnings, middles and endings, "but not necessarily in that order..." Hiroshima Mon Amour was a wonderful (and I believe successful) experiment, and I have to say, one of my favourite films.
Gary Couzens
06-01-2005, 07:48
<i>Marienbad</i> was one of the first Scope films I ever saw fully letterboxed on TV - on BBC2's Film Club in 1986. Just as well, as it would really be unwatchable panned and scanned. A pity they didn't do the same to the Resnais film they double-billed it with - <i>L'amour à mort</i> - as they panned and scanned that one... Nowadays of course they'd show them all in 16:9. (I have vivid memories of the mess they made of <i>Two-Lane Blacktop</i>...<shudder>.)
I last saw <i>Marienbad</i> in a double bill with <i>Hiroshima</i> at the Scala in the late 80s. The latter must have had some impact as I can still remember quite a bit of it.
While we're on to Resnais, could we have DVDs of <i>Muriel</i> and <i>Je t'aime je t'aime</i> please? Preferably while he's still around to make some contribution to them?
anephric
06-01-2005, 08:39
Surely, it is possible to make similar kinds of remarks about other great filmic romances: "the attempt to link all this to the [American Civil War] is clumsy and tasteless..." (Gone With the Wind).
I could quite happily agree with that ;)
Remember, the film was one of the first nouvelle vague movies - contemporary with A Bout de Souffle and Le Quatre Cent Coups.
Well, Resnais was part of the Left Bank; politically, aesthetically it was quite distinct from the Cahiers school and hence their films (Marker etc) are quite distinct from, say, Godard and Truffaut.
DanWilde1966
06-01-2005, 08:52
Well, Resnais was part of the Left Bank; politically, aesthetically it was quite distinct from the Cahiers school and hence their films (Marker etc) are quite distinct from, say, Godard and Truffaut.
Yes - this occurred to me as I was writing that post. :)
Well, Resnais was part of the Left Bank; politically, aesthetically it was quite distinct from the Cahiers school and hence their films (Marker etc) are quite distinct from, say, Godard and Truffaut.
Yes, in certain levels of film studies it would seem expedient to lump them together, but while Hiroshima could be viewed as a common point-of-origin, the two schools did end up following quite different paths.
I share the same birthday as Resnais, BTW (well, not the same year...) :)
DanWilde1966
06-01-2005, 11:14
Yes, in certain levels of film studies it would seem expedient to lump them together, but while Hiroshima could be viewed as a common point-of-origin, the two schools did end up following quite different paths.
I share the same birthday as Resnais, BTW (well, not the same year...) :)
Many thanks for your Hiroshima Mon Amour DVD reference, by the way. I didn't mean to ignore it. :)
Many thanks for your Hiroshima Mon Amour DVD reference, by the way. I didn't mean to ignore it. :)
S'okay, I just figured everyone had got too caught up in the excitement with all this talk of modernism and schools and such... :D
anephric
06-01-2005, 12:02
Shut my poncey mouth.
The film is set in Hiroshima, a mere fourteen years after the holocaust there, so the bomb would surely have to feature in the story on some level. I find the romance between the actress and the architect to be utterly enigmatic and compelling, leading to a final shot (involving nouvelle roman-style verbal repetition) that resolves nothing. I don't find anything in the film clumsy. The opening sequence (which, I assume, is what you find particularly offensive), is a shocking way of introducing the setting and the relationship in one stroke. I for one find it extremely cinematic. I cannot see any way in which it could be perceived as "tasteless". Hiroshima Mon Amour was a wonderful (and I believe successful) experiment, and I have to say, one of my favourite films.
The thing is though Dan, the Hiroshima setting - and all the admittedly impressive formal innovation - is used to add artificial significance to a banal melodrama that is no more deep in and of itself than any other trite paperback romance. Any psychosexual melodrama would gain significance if set during the aftermath of that kind of tragedy and say just as little about the real life events. I think the use of the Hiroshima tragedy is spurious and exploitative because the film says nothing at all about it except that it was destructive and tragic and the world would be a better place if we didn't do things like that. Which is very laudable but you can achieve the same thing with a placard in any local high street. Essentially, that's what is tasteless and clumsy about it - it's on the same level as using the Holocaust and a particularly repellent bit of Nazi game-playing as a 'money shot' in "Sophie's Choice" to make the audience gasp. I know very well what the use of repetition is meant to achieve but what works on paper (debatably) doesn't always work on film and I don't think it does here - it just makes the characters look half-witted.
I also feel honour-bound to point out that Truffaut and Godard were as much influenced by classic American cinema of the 'Golden Age' as they were by modernism per se.
anephric
06-01-2005, 12:40
That's an interesting aside about Sophie's Choice there... I was reading not so long ago a piece about whether it's possible to make a 'bad' film about the Holocaust since audiences (and critics) would be loathe (in the main) to dislike a film with such ostensibly lofty or humanitarian themes, and also how the value of such things as historical documents (however vague their authenticity) outweighs their contentious shortcomings as cinema.
For my money, Jakob the Liar far outstrips Sophie's Choice for cheap manipulation.
Apologies for vague off-topicality and questionable taste.
I have to agree with Mike - its formal and visual aspects are ravishing, but it really doesn't have a lot to say. Also, am I the only one who loathes Emmanuelle Riva's irritatingly mannered and forced performance (watch whenever she laughs oh-so-spontaneously)?
That's an interesting aside about Sophie's Choice there... I was reading not so long ago a piece about whether it's possible to make a 'bad' film about the Holocaust since audiences (and critics) would be loathe (in the main) to dislike a film with such ostensibly lofty or humanitarian themes, and also how the value of such things as historical documents (however vague their authenticity) outweighs their contentious shortcomings as cinema.
Otherwise known as the Stanley Kramer fallacy, I believe. One should give these filmmakers a break because they're daring to deal with 'difficult' subject matter. I believe Gavin Lambert, once labelled by Kramer as a 'cynic', remarked, "So do we give him 20% for effort?" Quite apart from anything else, virtually all these films preach to the converted and congratulate their audience on their own righteousness.
For my money, Jakob the Liar far outstrips Sophie's Choice for cheap manipulation.
It's certainly a much less elegantly made film but it doesn't have the queasy pornographic voyeurism of the 'confession' scene in "Sophie's Choice". But I'd quite happily see them all burn in hell.
DanWilde1966
06-01-2005, 14:27
The thing is though Dan, the Hiroshima setting - and all the admittedly impressive formal innovation - is used to add artificial significance to a banal melodrama that is no more deep in and of itself than any other trite paperback romance. Any psychosexual melodrama would gain significance if set during the aftermath of that kind of tragedy and say just as little about the real life events. I think the use of the Hiroshima tragedy is spurious and exploitative because the film says nothing at all about it except that it was destructive and tragic and the world would be a better place if we didn't do things like that. Which is very laudable but you can achieve the same thing with a placard in any local high street. Essentially, that's what is tasteless and clumsy about it - it's on the same level as using the Holocaust and a particularly repellent bit of Nazi game-playing as a 'money shot' in "Sophie's Choice" to make the audience gasp. I know very well what the use of repetition is meant to achieve but what works on paper (debatably) doesn't always work on film and I don't think it does here - it just makes the characters look half-witted... I also feel honour-bound to point out that Truffaut and Godard were as much influenced by classic American cinema of the 'Golden Age' as they were by modernism per se.
I can see your arguments. I suppose the kind of subtext you're missing in the central romance of Hiroshima Mon Amour, is present in a film like The Graduate, in which Braddock's relationships with both Mrs Robinson and Elaine are pregnant with wider significance. The relationship with Mrs Robinson shows Ben's nervousness and sheer virginity - his learning of the sexual ropes, so to speak, whilst his relationship with Elaine is encapsulated in the film's opening S & G song "The Sound of Silence": as they sit on the bus in the final scene of the movie, they have absolutely nothing to say to one another. The relationship demonstrates a sort of ennui - an emptiness in Benjamin himself. In 1967, this captured a certain essence of the time. So, a film relationship became symbolic of a whole era and a whole generation. I can see why you find this depth lacking in Resnais' film.
Still, for all its faults, the Resnais film still seems to scratch an itch in me. Perhaps it's that musical score - the piano sections in particular? The film has a certain obsessive chemistry which caught my imagination when I first looked at it.
Yes, Godard and Truffaut were obsessed by American cinema and American pulp fiction - David Goodis and Cornell Woolrich, for starters…
R2 release of Marienbad coming in May according to DVD Times (http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=56737) :)
Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease be anamorphic...
RichDB10
13-05-2005, 14:05
Comparison of the R2 Optimum edition with that of the OOP Fox Lorber edition over at DVD Beaver
Hmmm...do i opt for the Optimum or hold out for rumours of an impending Criterion edition surfacing in the near future...decisions,decisions....
Anamorphic joy! That Optimum disc looks top drawer - time to ditch the R@RE OOP Fox Lorber on the 'Bay, I guess.
Wendell Armbruster
15-05-2005, 17:29
Do people know that Alfred Hitchcock makes an appearance in Marienbad? I thought this was just a rumour but when I last saw the film in a stunning 35mm print at the NFT many moons ago, there he was . . .
I've never seen this (or at least I don't think I have, except maybe in a dream!? :shrug: ) but I suddenly feel utterly compelled to! Very weird! Does anyone else get these 'moments'? :nuts:
Marienbad represents a defining moment in my cinematic education. Lucky enough to see it around 15 years ago when my jaundiced coutenance was relatively immature. Sublime experience which I long to replicate shortly through the medium of dvd.
Wendell Armbruster
26-05-2005, 09:28
Just seen this again, after a period of many years, and was delighted (and a little surprised) to find that Marienbad still casts its magical, utterly mesmerical spell. The DVD is pretty damn near ravishing and I just marvel at how Resnais maintains that atmosphere while Robbe-Grillet's script elegantly reprises reprises elegantly. I wa also struck by how much Stanley K might have been influened by it - notably the final scene of 2001 and pretty much all of The Shining. Hitchcock, by the way (see my earlier post) can be seen on the right hand side of the frame, in the shadows, at roughly 11 mins 40 seconds.
clydefro
01-02-2008, 04:26
Last Year at Marienbad has started its revival run in the U.S. so a Criterion DVD shouldn't be far off (autumn perhaps?).
I had never seen the film before today and I'm reluctant to judge it too heavily after one showing, but I was disappointed. Very stale, manipulative and completely empty. It reminded me just a little of Bergman's The Silence, except missing any strand of audience identification. That's not a deal-breaker for me, but I do think Marienbad has been defanged from years of viewer-training exercises in non sequitur arthouse cinema. I can imagine the sensation the film caused in 1961/1962 though.
The other film it brought to mind was Eyes Wide Shut, but that might be a visceral association on my part.
DanWilde1966
01-02-2008, 13:23
I've not looked at Marienbad since before this thread was started (2002) - which is probably significant. ;)
I wish somebody (preferably Criterion) would release Resnais' Je T'Aime Je T'Aime on an English-subbed DVD!
I wish somebody (preferably Criterion) would release Resnais' Je T'Aime Je T'Aime on an English-subbed DVD!
Holy heck yes. I've been reading Monaco's book on Resnais and there's a great chapter on JTJT - I'm more desperate to see it now than ever.
Criterion's Resnais output seemed to dry up after Night and Fog and Hiroshima Mon Amour, but here's hoping the Marienbad revival does herald a new batch (not that there's owt wrong with Optimum's release of Marienbad, which is a very nice transfer indeed).
Robin Davies
02-02-2008, 21:13
Hitchcock, by the way (see my earlier post) can be seen on the right hand side of the frame, in the shadows, at roughly 11 mins 40 seconds.
Thanks for pointing this out. (It's about 11.09 on the Optimum disc.)
Do you think it's Hitchcock himself or a wax model? He seems very still...
clydefro
02-02-2008, 21:30
I believe it's actually a cut-out, cardboard maybe, like you'd see in a theater lobby.
By coincidence, I had watched my Optimum DVD the night before this thread was revived. The film continues to divide opinion. I'm quite sure that Resnais was not endorsing the empty posturing of mannequins, which has supplied the total content of many a perfume ad. since. Manner and matter are perfectly in accord and we could spend a long time in the analysis of its hermetic mysteries. It is a fascinating spectacle in the full sense of both words.
Resnais seems to be simultaneously fascinated and appalled by the power of images, even his own. He is an ironist who uses branching narratives to subvert the unquestioned reality of what he depicts. The Optimum disc contains a rather splendid extra in the shape of Resnais' 1956 short documentary about the French National Library 'Toute la mémoire du monde.' Here the grand tracking shots of labarynthine spaces filled with mouldering tomes give way at the end to a hive of human activity as the dead books become living experiences in the hands of the readers. It's a film that Ruskin might have inspired - or Borges. :notworthy
DanWilde1966
07-02-2008, 07:34
Muriel (http://www.thedvdforums.com/affiliatelink.php?localaffiliateid=23&url=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Muriel-Film-Alain-Resnais-REGION/dp/B000LW7L04/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1202369447&sr=1-1) is now available, after years of obscurity. I've never seen it, but Sight & Sound raved -- absolutely raved -- about it when it first came out.
You've probably all seen it, but there's an article about Resnais, and three of his films that are upcoming on Region 1, currently on DVDBeaver:
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/articles/alain_resnais.htm
Wendell Armbruster
19-02-2008, 08:34
Alain Robbe-Grillet, the novelist who wrote the script for Marienbad, died yesterday.
Thanks for saying, I had no idea that he had died. I'm very interested in his work, though admittedly I find it pretty difficult. Its a real shame that more of his own directorial efforts aren't available on DVD.
DanWilde1966
19-02-2008, 19:34
Alain Robbe-Grillet, the novelist who wrote the script for Marienbad, died yesterday.Oh god. I'm vastly more a fan of Grillet's novels than I am of Marienbad. They're dropping like flies; sad. :(
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