Last Year at Marienbad (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Last Year at Marienbad (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
by Alain Resnais

Last Year at Marienbad (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

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DVD details

Actor: Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Helena Kornel, Luce Garcia-Ville, Sacha Pitoeff
Director: Alain Resnais
Brand: IMAGE ENT.
Cinematographer: Sacha Vierny
Composer: Francis Seyrig
Audio: French (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-06-23
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Criterion
Product features:

Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais' epochal visual poem has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. A surreal fever dream, or perhaps a nightmare, Last Year at Marienbad (L'annee derniere a Marienbad), written by the radical master of the New Novel, Alain Robbe-Grillet, gorgeously fuses the past with

DVD Reviews of Last Year at Marienbad (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

DVD Review: a very well known film is a great release
Summary: 4 Stars

This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

"Last Year at Marienbad", directed by Alain Resnais, released in France as "L'Ann?e derni?re ? Marienbad" is a film about a man who attemps to convince a woman he just met that they had a love affair a year earlier. The film takes place at a Chateau and includes some very interesting scenes. There is a famous surreal scene with some people casting shadows while the surrounding trees do not. The film itself is very impressive and won many awards.

The Criteiron Collection version has some great special features and the packaging is very minimalist in style. The picture of the cover shown here does not do justice to its appearance. The release is a two disc set and includes a booklet with more material.

Disc one contains the film and the original theatrical tralier with a re-release trailer.
Disc two contains an exclusive interview with Alain Resnais, a new documentary on the film's production, an interview with film scholar, Ginette Vincendeau, and two documentaries by Resnais. "Toute la m?moire du monde" is a documentary about the National Library of France and has an in-depth tour of the stacks and how books are catalogued and shelved. The second documentary is "Le chant du Styr?ne" is about the molding of plastics. I found the documentary about the French National Library to be very interesting, in part, because I work in a college library.

This DVD set is the best version of the film available and a must for cinephiles.

DVD Review: Unique Film with Pristine Transfer
Summary: 5 Stars

(This review refers to the Blu-Ray edition) Criterion has done it again! The beautiful black and white imagery of this haunting film is presented in a flawless transfer. Incredibly sharp and detailed image for a nearly fifty year old film. The booklet has three or four interesting essays, plus there are the usual informative extras. There has been plenty written about the film, i.e. what it means, etc. so I won't go into that except to say that if you want to watch something totally different, then this film is for you. Fans of non-linear plots step to the front of the line! I also reccommend going to Roger Eberts site after you watch and read his essay under 'great movies'.

DVD Review: "Last Pear at Marienbad"
Summary: 2 Stars

"Last Year at Marienbad". This is a Boring, basic "French" movie, although I wouldn't put it in the same sentence with "The Seventh Seal". It's a movie with questionable Claude Levi-Strauss language in spots, some meaningless New Wave scenes, no character development in others, and a somewhat predictable ending that altogether serves to pass the time away and/or play in the background while you do something else.

Not exactly a landmark of French film making. Technically speaking, this movie is well made, which somehow makes it even worse.

DVD Review: Some films have to be made
Summary: 5 Stars

Marienbad falls into the category of the movie that had to be made, like Repulsion, like Deliverance, a few others, the movies that opened a door through which other filmmakers (not to mention poets, artists, writers) were grateful to walk. A movie that says something about consciousness, about human experience, that hadn't been said before.

These films are not pleasant to watch, and they lend themselves to pastiche (especially Marienbad) but they serve a purpose. You have to give Resnais credit for having the idea and getting it financed.

To me the movie feels like a depiction of a dream. Situations are seen, seen in reverse, everything is repeated, everything is contradicted, always with the same verbal refrain: "Try to remember. You love me." Many dreams feel like this. Delphine Seyrig falls onto a bed in five different ways in one scene. Resnais is making a point about repetition and variation.

The Russian guy with the game that no one can win -- in my opinion he was put in so that someone would come into the theater and see the movie, rather than no one. Something for people to talk about.

DVD Review: Makes You Think
Summary: 5 Stars

After the first 30 minutes of the film Last Year at Marienbad I thought it was the most pretentious film I had ever seen. For some reason, I stuck with it, and by the end of the film, I had decided it was one of the most brilliant films I had ever seen.

Don't look for a linear, simple story with a discernible plot. Let the film wash over you like waves on the beach, and just accept that what is happening on the screen is not necessarily supposed to make logical sense. My feeling on the film is that the characters are not even alive, they are probably in limbo between life and death, and that is why they appear to be trapped in a world they cannot leave, and why the woman cannot remember what happened to her just a year ago.

The beautiful thing about this film is that it allows you to form your own opinion on what is happening to the three main characters - the director himself said the film had no meaning, although I think he was being disingenuous. The film has plenty of meaning, but it's a little like holding up a mirror to the viewer, you see what you bring with you. The film is all about mood, atmosphere, and setting.

This film made me think more than the average ten films put together. Highly recommended if you like experimental cinema and want something different than the usual Hollywood movie of the week.

Description of Last Year at Marienbad (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais' epochal visual poem has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. A surreal fever dream, or perhaps a nightmare, Last Year at Marienbad (L'ann?e derni?re ? Marienbad), written by the radical master of the New Novel, Alain Robbe-Grillet, 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-bedecked ch?teau 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-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES: . New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Alain Resnais, with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack . New audio interview with Resnais . New documentary on the making of Last Year at Marienbad, featuring interviews with many of Resnais' collaborators . New video interview with film scholar Ginette Vincendeau on the history of the film and its many mysteries . Two short documentaries by Resnais: Toute la m?moire du monde (1956) and Le chant du styr?ne (1958) . Theatrical trailer . Optional original, unrestored French soundtrack . New and improved subtitle translation . PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critic Mark Polizzotti and film scholar Fran?ois Thomas, and Alain Robbe-Grillet's introduction to the published screenplay and comments on the film

Stills from Last Year at Marienbad (Click for larger image)

One of the most ferociously iconoclastic and experimental films of the French New Wave, Alain Resnais's 1961 feature, winner of the grand prize at that year's Venice Film Festival, is based on a script by Alain Robbe-Grillet. At its center is what seems to be a simple but unanswerable puzzle: Did its protagonist (Giorgio Albertazzi) have an affair the year before with a woman (Delphine Seyrig) he just met (or possibly re-met) at his hotel? The inquiry becomes an unsettling experiment in flattening the dimensions of past, present, and future so that any difference between them becomes meaningless, while Resnais's coldly formal but oddly dreamlike geometric compositions make space itself seem a function of subjective memory. Add to that Resnais's trademark tracking shots--long, smooth, a visual correlative of a wordless feeling--and this is a film that truly gets under the skin in almost inexplicable ways. One of the most influential works of its time. --Tom Keogh

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