One of the most distinctive classics of modern world cinema is at Film Forum for a run during that traditionally delirious week between Christmas and New Year's Eve.
Released in 1961, Alain Resnais' "Last Year at Marienbad" may just be the most polarizing of major works of the French New Wave. Scripted by Alain Robbe-Grillet, the film is a willful study in form over content, a deliberately non-linear, gorgeously filmed black and white work that looks like nothing else, as it resolutely defies conventional comprehension.
I first say "Last Year" on a double bill with Resnais' previous film, the similarly impressionistic "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" at Cinema Village, another haven of repertory cinema. While the latter may be the more accessible film, being based on a script by Marguerite Duras that consists almost entirely of a dialogue between two lovers, "Last Year" is nonetheless no less an achievement, for it shows the increased facility of visual language by the burgeoning master Resnais.
Such is the potency of the stylish, stark imagery of formally dressed holidaymakers at a spa that may be situated in the titular resort town in the Czech Republic, that the film captivates even when its evanescent story proves occasionally confounding. Those looking for hyper realism are advised to check their expectations at the door. Those seeking the sort of surrealistic, unconventional experience of a David Lynch film may well find inspiration here, for his oeuvre is almost unthinkable without the pioneering work of Resnais.
Easily one of the most critically divisive of major works of modern cinema, "Last Year" is important if for no other reason than it urges viewers to reconsider their expectations, and is likely to prove a particularly memorable viewing experience, at least for offering forth that which is so defiantly atypical of the modern narrative cinematic experience. More akin to an experimental film that other New Wave gems by masters like Truffaut, "Last Year" has clearly proved a hugely influential work, not least on the worlds of fashion photography and music videography.
Since Film Forum is one of New York's most appealing cinemas, and while it is still possible to see works of European repertory cinema on a big screen, I can think of little on offer at the city's various cinemas that is likely to prove as memorable viewing as "Last Year". Since the hols season is inevitably unpredictable and mania-inducing, why not thumb your nose at convention and see something truly surrealistic?
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