(1961, b/w; L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, French) New Wave author Alain Robbe-Grillet of the French nouveau roman, in which he experimented with literary space and time, employing analytical and geometrical precision in his descriptions and subtle variations in repetitions of scenes, wrote the screenplay of this nouveau cinéma, for which I've waited (during which I've read in translation several of his novels, including The Voyeur, Jealousy, and La Maison de Rendez-vous) decades to see.

In a forward to In the Labyrinth, Bruce Morrissette wrote (taken from a 1958 essay): "The art of Robbe-Grillet, with its objectification of mental images, its use of psychic chronology, its development of 'objectal' sequences or series related formally and functionally to plot and to the implicit psychology of characters, its refusal to engage in logical discourse or analytical commentary, is as ideally suited to film as to narrative, and may well serve as the basis for a 'unified field' theory of novel-film relationships in the future."

Nearly half a century later, this film in black-and-white as if lifted off the pages of a novel, directed by Alain Resnais, remains a tantalizingly mysterious enigma. "I must have you here alive," says the stranger (Giorgio Albertazzi), attempting to convince the woman (Delphine Seyrig) that they first met a year before in the gardens of Frederiksbad: "Alive, as you have already been every evening, for weeks, for months."

They are in a gloomy, deserted hotel of endless corridors and silent rooms, empty salons and galleries, with baroque ornamentation, chandeliers, sculpted door frames, columns, mirrors, portraits on the walls of a bygone era with thick, heavy carpeting such that no sound reaches one's ear. Yet the visual contradicts the narrative. "You hardly seem to remember me," he says, telling her of their earlier encounter. "I doubt it was me," she replies: "You must be mistaken."

A stage performance with actors like mannequins resembles the hotel's patrons, frozen in motion, between fragmented conversations repeated (void voices, mute servants) as sinister organ music plays eerily throughout the soundtrack. "I've waited so long for you," he says. A dream, perhaps, she suggests.

Walls and silence, says the narrator, of the secrets hidden in the hotel: false exits with no escape. Guests remark on last summer's (or was it in '28 or '29?) freak freeze of weather. The woman's escort (Sacha Pitoëff), perhaps her husband, demonstrates to the stranger a card trick (also using matchsticks and other objects) - four rows with seven, five, three, and one card - in which he always wins (the loser picking up the last card or item). Afterward he goes to the shooting gallery with his pistol.

In the stranger's description of their initial acquaintanceship, they discussed a Greek statute of a man and a woman, she offering an interpretation contrary to his of the immobile representation. Outside in the sunlight she broke the heel of her shoe; inside in the salon's dimness she breaks a glass: "Leave me alone."

He speaks of having gone to her bedroom; she says it's impossible. He shows her a photograph he took of her then, imploring her: "Try to remember." Afraid of the implications, she asks: "Why must it be me?"

Are these corridors the eternal labyrinth of death? Is this a representation of the end of an era, frozen in time, some 30 years before? Or perhaps the film says that that which is inaccessible - the beauty of imagination - is most alluring. Or maybe it expresses the paralyzing fear of the consequences of a love affair exposed. Robbe-Grillet adamantly denied that his fiction contained any allegorical value; each work was self-contained within itself.

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in video and/or DVD format, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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