Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année dernière à Marienbad)

Released 1961
Stars Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sascha Pitoëff, Françoise Bertin, Luce Garcia-Ville
Directed by Alain Resnais

It's easy to smile at Alain Resnais' 1961 film, which inspired so much satire and yet made such a lasting impression. Incredible to think that students actually did stand in the rain to be baffled by it, and then to argue for hours about its meaning--even though the director claimed it had none. I hadn't seen "Marienbad" in years, and when I saw the new digitized video disc edition in a video store, I reached out automatically: I wanted to see it again, to see if it was silly or profound, and perhaps even to recapture an earlier self--a 19-year-old who hoped Truth could be found in Art.

Summary by Roger Ebert

"Last Year at Marienbad" is not a film, it's a piece of art. It's like a Picasso painting on celluloid. Resnais may have claimed it had no meaning, but he clearly had a vision. It's a subjective piece of art created for the viewer to interpret. There's a scene where the narrator ("X") recalls a discussion between himself and "A" about the meaning of a statue in the hotel. They each interpret it their own way, belying details about their own personas. After a lengthy retelling of their previous conversation, "M" arrives to dispel all mystery. He gives a pragmatic description of what the characters represent and all mystery is dissolved. There is an uncomfortable silence as "X" has been embarrassed in the presence of his love by her lover. This is a perfect metaphor, and I'm sure it was intentional, for this film. When you interpret art, you take a chance. You open yourself up emotionally and intellectually, and you may be ridiculed for what you say or you may be hailed as a genius. Regardless, you must discuss art with others to appreciate and understand art. Then someone comes along and shoots holes in your pretentious analysis by stating the obvious. That's irrelevant, because you both can be correct. In this case, "M" tells us the statues were of Charles III and his wife before their trial, and they had been rendered in classical garb due to tradition. However, the artist's interpretation of those figures clearly showed two people trying to protect each other. "X" and "A" had been discussing from their different vantage points as man and woman who was protecting whom from what. An artist takes something concrete and adds his own interpretation. That's part of being human and having the ability to think in the abstract, and that's what this film is about. It's about something so absurd that on the surface it means nothing, but in the abstract it can mean anything.

I've read three analyses so far, and not only are all three different from each other, they're nothing like mine. To me this film represents a dream in which a man, "X," desperately tries to rescue his love, "A," from death, represented by "M." I felt the card game played by "M" was a metaphor for how death cannot be beaten. At some point "M" had lain claim to "A," and "X" had tried to rescue her the year before, but there is no rescue from death. -- Bill Alward, May 15, 2001