Feb 05
THE FRENCH NEW WAVE AT 50
RESNAIS’ “LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD”
AT THE PLAZA THEATRE
The Calgary Cinematheque presents the forth in a series of screenings celebrating the 50th anniversary of the French New Wave. Bursting onto the scene in 1959, young filmmakers like Truffaut and Godard changed the landscape of cinema immediately and indelibly. Even five decades later, independent films still reverberate with their influence. Our series of films will screen on the first Tuesday of each month, with a repeat screening and lecture the following Saturday. This series is presented in collaboration with the Alliance Française of Calgary, with support from the French Embassy. The series continues with screenings of a rare 35mm print of Alain Resnais’ LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD on Saturday February 6.
In conjunction with our French New Wave series, we present a monthly series of short lectures by film experts. These lectures will take place on Saturday afternoons and will be followed by a film screening and discussion. The series continues this Saturday February 6 at Noon with “Alain Resnais and the ‘Left Bank’ of the French New Wave” presented by Lee Carruthers (Assistant Professor of Film Studies, University of Calgary) and a repeat screening of Alain Resnais’ enigmatic and beautiful 1961 film, LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD.
Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais’ epochal LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (L’année dernière à Marienbad) has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. Written by radical master of the New Novel Alain Robbe-Grillet, this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, 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-filled château 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. Winner of the Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival 1961.
“Hopelessly retro, eternally avant-garde, and ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL MOVIES EVER MADE”
– J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
