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

A chronicle of what happens when the truth comes knocking in your life. At first the wild love affair while on holiday, but an affair only: When this heart comes back to carry you off for good, there's denial, conflict, and ultimately the hard choice between it and your stalwart, practical mate: the life you'd been leading so comfortably, so accommodatingly, for so long. Enthralling.

This enigmatic film still hasn't yielded all of its mysteries - mostly because the viewer is awarded complete freedom to give its intricate rythms and figures the significations he or she perceives. The brilliant soundtrack, which combines a textured set of voice-overs and somber organ music, induces reverie... but a reverie highlighted by brief and unforgettable nightmares ('Marienbad' is unsettling to a degree that few movies are). The film's world is above all artistic: it is a 90-minute visit inside a museum of mirrors, statues, photographs and paintings; the characters themselves assume all of these roles over the course of the work. The cinematic image feeds on other images - some are seen in mirrors, others come from illustrations. Everything, from theme to form, is absorbed and transformed by art; this is in line with the notion of "l'art pour l'art" championed by 'Marienbad' writer Robbe-Grillet at the time. The film also has connections with Resnais' own work: memory is as much preserved as it is artistically constructed, and 'X' (Albertazzi) can be read as an artist-figure - something Resnais would return to in 'Providence' (1976). It is tempting to envision the Marienbad chateau and its surroundings as a dedalian labyrinth whose Minotaur lies just out of reach... but this is only one possible reading among countless others. This unique masterpiece should be seen again and again.

"Last Year at Marienbad"(1961) is here presented by Criterion in remastered HD Blu-ray, and it is well worth the wait. This enigmatic gem, directed by Alain Resnais, is about persuasion, and memory, as well as being a tribute to the silent films, and early talkies. I'm reminded of the early suspense films of Alfred Hitchcock, like "Rebecca", as well as early horror films, such as Nosferatu. The grand darkened stairwell looks like it may very well have been descended by Dracula himself. The character "M" reinforces this reference with his gaunt figure. The heroine "A"(Delphine Seyrig) often appears like a figure imprisoned in Nosferatu's castle, especially in the bedroom scenes. The other major character "X", played by the charismatic Georgio Albertazzi, tries to persuade the heroine to leave with him, that they had met last year at Marienbad, and promised to be together. As the film unfolds we learn that some violent act may have happened last year. Rooms and corridors shift from scene to scene as if in a dream. What is the truth? Does she really want to leave with "X"? Should she? Is "M" her husband? Even as this film is a homage to earlier films and directors (Alfred Hitchcock's sideways silhouette is seen in a hallway about twelve minutes into the film), other films have since been influenced by this seminal film with its' fragmented subjective structure as has been seen in films like Christopher Nolan's "Memento" or Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining".

This version of the film is unique in that it offers the viewer both the original and remastered soundtrack. Alain Resnais believed that the remastered versions of soundtracks often sacrificed the range of tonalities found in the originals, and so he stipulated that the viewer have the choice to hear either version when viewing the film.

This disc also offers other extras not found on my VHS tape, such as a new audio interview with the director, and a couple of short documentaries by Resnais, "Le chant du styrene"(1958), and "Toute la memoire du monde"(1956), as well as a documentary about the making of the film, and a new interview with film scholar Ginette Vincendeau.

All in all it's a real treat to finally see this defining avant garde work in Blu-ray.