LA Times critic Kevin Thomas gives the re-release of the 1961 movie, Last Year at MarienbadAlain Resnais' 1961 "Last Year at Marienbad" remains one of cinema's glorious enigmas, endlessly compelling and intriguing. It is a beautiful film, shot in superb black-and-white and set primarily in Munich's extravagant Nymphenburg Palace, which, along with several other locales, stands in for an ornate resort hotel.Synopsis of "Last Year At Marienbad" by Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
A cinematic puzzle, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad is a radical exploration of the formal possibilities of film. Beautifully shot in Cinemascope by Sacha Vierny, the movie is a riddle of seduction, a mercurial enigma darting between a present and past which may not even exist, let alone converge. The film stars Giorgio Albertazzi as an unnamed sophisticate attempting to convince a similarly nameless woman (Delphine Seyrig) that they met and were romantically involved a year ago in the same enormous, baroque European hotel. In the end, it hardly matters -- they're not characters so much as pawns anyway. Hypnotically dreamlike, Last Year at Marienbad is a surrealist parody of Hollywood melodrama, a high-fashion romance with a dark, alien underbelly. According to screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet, the movie is a pure construction, without a frame of reference outside of its own existence -- the lives of its characters begin when the lights go down, and conclude when they come back up.
Opened June 25, 1961
Runtime: 1:34
NR
Cast: Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoeff, Francoise Spira
Director: Alain Resnais
Genres: Psychological Drama, Avant-garde / Experimental, Surrealist Film
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