User Reviews

This one is worth seeing by anyone interested in still photography, time travel stories, or good cinema in general. But because I am a big fan of 12 Monkeys' brilliance I was a little disappointed in this original story.

WARRING! SPOILERS ENCLOSED FROM HERE ON:

My biggest problem with La Jetee is that it is not great science fiction, it is an intellectual cop out and could be better labeled as `fantasy.' In La Jetee a man from the near future is chosen to go back into the past to get items necessary for human survival after a nuclear war. He is selected because of his strong memories and obsessive dreams about the past. The scientists are able to amplify these dreams in a way that allows him to enter the past. It is far fetched, but those are the rule it sets up and I as the viewer was willing to accept them. The plot problem comes in when they decide to send him into the far future. How is this possible? He has no memories of the future for the scientists to latch onto. The film breaks its own scientific reasoning, which breaks my suspension of disbelieve, and tells me that the writer got sloppy. Worse, the idea of going into the far future, because if they are there they must have found a way to survive, therefore they can save us so they can be born, is so much illogical nonsense as to be childish. This is a clear sign of writer's block. La Jetee got its hero into a situation that it did not know how to get out of, so it decides to call on the hand of God (the far future people) to solve the problem. Whenever you introduce previously unknown and all-powerful characters late in the story it is an obvious script failure. This offers no opportunity for your character to grow, to sink or swim on their own, and leaves the audience feeling gypped. Hamlet should regain his father's kingdom or bring down everyone around him in his maddening quest – you don' t have the Virgin Mary suddenly appear, give him back his sanity, and put him on the throne. It's just not good writing. 12 Monkeys corrects La Jetee's error by never going into the far future, while also added more details that pull everything together in a more intelligent manor. In La Jetee the main character's actions has nothing to do with the nuclear war, but the main character's actions in 12 Monkeys are an integral part of the virus that almost wipes out the human race. This is a far superior plot.

I fear that what most `high-minded' people are judging La Jetee on is the fact that it is French. Just as many Americans would never see a foreign film, other Americans would never dare believe that Hollywood could ever do anything right. You can see the obvious slant one way or the other in so many reviews of 12 Monkeys, La Jetee, and other films. But the fatal flaw of La Jetee can not be wiped clean just because it is big in `artistic' circles. It was a wonderful idea that was later improved upon.

La jetée (1961) aka The Pier is one of the best, poignant, and most unusual films ever made. The 28 minutes long collection of unbelievably rich, mesmerizing, still black and white images accompanied with the mourning score and sparse narration look inside your very soul while you look at them and they talk to you and reach to all your senses. This is correct - the film used a photo-montage technique but once stated watching, I was so enthralled that I did not think about technical part. The film is simple, poetic, philosophical, and profound. It is an anti war/post-apocalyptic science fiction documentary style and at the same time the ode to love, longing, and to power of memory.

Here is the paradox - how can documentary, made of the still black and white images tell the story that would influence every following film about time travel and be the true feast for mind and soul? Well, it has happened in La jetée, and while watching you forget what genre the movie belongs to because it defies the definitions of genres, and you just don't want it to end even though you know from the beginning that this movie will never have a happy ending. Like millions of fascinated viewers I ask myself how that much was achieved with so little. Like an unnamed protagonist of La jetée is marked for life with an unforgettable image from his childhood, the viewer is marked with the still images of the film, especially by only one animated image of awakening in the film that comes like a miracle.

I finished earlier this evening re-watching Terry Gilliam's excellent film Twelve Monkeys (1995) for which La jetée was the inspiration. Now when I saw both, I am sure that if it were not for the unspeakably sad, beautiful and moving short film of Chris Marker that suggests that "calling past and future may save the present" and provides the extraordinary emotional impact with the story of return to the most vivid childhood memories again and again, there would be no brilliant and dark visions of Twelve Monkeys. Both films are glorious in their unique way and should be viewed together to be appreciated fully.

While for L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, it "pushed modernist ambiguity to new extremes" (Thompson and Bordwell 450), that is, it is more like a modern theater of absurd instead of a science fiction; an endless, even meaningless circulation instead of the unveiling of the truth and purpose. There's always the monotonous, apathetic voiceover which describes the luxury but highly artificial and emotionless hotel and also the scene from the nameless drama which the guests in the hotel are watching. What's the relationship between our lives and fictional works? Is it that our real lives are like the absurd fictional works? What's the purpose of it? These have already suggested that L'Année Dernière à Marienbad is a metafiction which requires multiple interpretations from the audience's own thinkings and the concern on time, memory, fantasy and the nature of the modern world. Nothing can be sure in L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, none of the time, place or characters. Whenever some "truths" are revealed, it adds to ambiguity, uncertainty and even disguise: When the man tells her that the statues of one man and woman in the garden depicts the situation that the man has seen some danger and asks the woman not to move, while the woman thinks that it's the woman who has seen something marvelous and is pointing it out to the man. These kind of perceptions of ambivalence appear a lot in the movie, which is one of the central motifs of the movie. And when the woman tries to figure out whom the man and woman in the statues are, the man thinks it doesn't matter who they are: "Then I just said they might as well be you and me, or anybody else." When the man tries to convince the woman that last year she was there but she says she has never been to Frederiksbad, his further statement is that: "Then somewhere else perhaps, Karlstadt, Marienbad or Baden-Salsa, or even here in this salon." This kind of remark sounds very unlogical and absurd, but it also seems to reveal the nature of encounter, life or even existence. Furthermore, whenever the man mentions something that is of great importance to their last year's experience in the hotel, the woman seems to know some details, but at the same time she denies. We cannot tell whether it's the woman who is always trying to conceal the truth or it's the man that who is trying to lie.Throughout the whole movie , the audience cannot be sure whether what they are watching are the subjective reality through one or both characters' eye or it's the perspective of the director. And both in La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, the discussion of free will versus fate is involved. In La Jetée, the people of the "future" reject these scoriae of another time, that is, the past. But at the same time they couldn't deny it because humanity had survived and if he deny the past, the means of its survival is denied. And when the man tries to return to the world of his childhood and to the woman who's perhaps waiting to him, he could do nothing to help, but witness his own death. Before his death, he finally realizes that his own imagination lies to himself, and some parts of his life are forever lost. While in L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, after the man finally explains to the woman that it is her husband who shoots her in her bedroom, he quickly denies, "No, this isn't the right ending, I must have you alive." This statement blurs the boundary of time, which may suggests that the man is the saver who tries to rescue the woman to the "right ending" through time travel, or perhaps only his illusion. As usual, we cannot tell. Without seeing the actual outcome, it's highly doubted that the resistance from the helpless human beings against fate always turns out to be in vain: Human beings live in the paradox of free will and fate, whenever we practice our free will, we're trapped in the snare which is arranged by ourselves, that is, fate. And on the question that what's the meaning of existence, there's no answer but a sense of void. Works Cited: Neupert, Richard. A History of the French New Wave Cinema. London: The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, 2007. Collinson, Diané. Fifty Major Philosophers: A Reference Guide. London: British Library Cataloguing, 1987. Thompson and Bordwell. Film History. 450.

The Juxtaposition Analysis of La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad are comparable. In terms of the same theme of time travel, the similar aesthetic perception of Left Bank Group in French New Wave, La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad share something common. But still, they respectively has their own distinctive attributes in the aspects such as cinematic languages and the connotation behind. In the following paragraphs, the similarities and differences between La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad and their own features will be argued. La Jetée is unfolded mostly in the subjective perception of the unknown man: After WWIII, Paris is ruined, and he's sent to time travel experiments for the sake of the present because of his strong obsession of the image from the past, that is, a woman who he always meets in his memory and then in the time travel. Even in his earliest memory he has seen the mysterious woman at the jetty and at the same time the death of a man. It is believed that both La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad may be influenced by the philosophy of Henri Bergson, while in my opinion, it's more obvious for La Jetée. According to Bergson's philosophy system, the concept of time is of great significance: "He distinguished between scientific time as measured by clocks and other devices, and pure time, a flowing sequence of continuous events which we experience immediately and within which it is sometimes possible, he claims, to act freely and authentically." (Collinson 130) That is, in Bergson's point of view, rather than a material entity that is fixed and can be measured and divided by scientific devices, time is actually something only exists in our consciousness and perception, and it's dynamic, vibrant and fleeting like the continuous flow of consciousness and life. Our memory and even our whole life will be changed, as long as our perception of time is changed. So in La Jetée, the direction of time is actually removed, the past, present and future interlaces with each other, which makes them not distinguishable any more. In the end of the movie, we find that the man whose death is perceived at the jetty by him in his so called childhood memory is actually himself. Through the view of the man, what we find is not the objective truth any more, but the subjective reality in his mind which makes him trapped in certain moments and also removes the real elements in his past life that his memory is composed of. Then we can never be sure that when and where the man meets the woman, and whether they are actually lovers, and most importantly, whether the truth is exactly what it is perceived by the man. And notably, La Jetée, being different from other movies, La Jetée is composed of still photographs instead of motion pictures, which creates a sense of heaviness and separation. And to some extent it reverts the nature of motion pictures and process of the recall of memory.

I remember watching this in Media Studies back when I was fifteen.

First, let's get the joke out of the way. It was the best PowerPoint our teacher showed us. Moving on.

I have similar feelings towards it as I did then. La Jetée is creepy as all hell; the German whispering throughout is seriously unnerving, and does more than half a usual film's runtime could ever hope to achieve.

There's something about the story being told in pictures that makes it feel so authentic. These snapshots act as memories, parts of a greater whole. It's only the most personal moments-like the one, beautiful portion of actual video in the entire film-that stay as intact as possible in our minds. That one moment is what grounds everything before and after. For one brief portion of time, the world was, is, real; other memories fade slower because of it.

I remember the computer I watched this film on, in a class that undoubtedly wasn't photographed at the time. Our teacher interestingly made us watch it with headphones. Perhaps that's why the audio creeps me out to this day.

We watched 12 Monkeys (which this film heavily inspired) afterwards of course, the film we were actually studying at the time. But it was on a projector, over several days. I liked 12 Monkeys more at the time (it really is fantastic), however La Jetée is what really stuck with me after all these years. It's the one thing I remember really well from the class in that particular year. I wonder if that moment of time exists for any of the other students going through a weird French PowerPoint, or maybe for the teacher handing it out on USBs for the fourth year in a row. I suspect it doesn't.

I have seen films that have sequences of still images, for example, the end of Night of the Living Dead with the torture of a black man, and the opening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with the skulls and bones. But I don't think I have ever seen a films, even a short one, where the whole story is told almost entirely in still photographs, until I watched this film, featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Basically, told through still mostly still photographs (with only a woman in bed blinking that moves) and narrated by Jean Négroni, a Man (Davos Hanich) is held prisoner in post-apocalyptic Paris in the aftermath World War III. Scientists are researching time travel, using test subjects to different time periods in the past and future to change the present, but they have difficulty finding the right subject to handle the shock treatment. Finding the man though, with an obsession for the past, and specifically the memory of a pre-war childhood Woman (Hélène Chatelain) before an incident happened, a person falling to the ground and lots of screaming people. The experiment transports him to the pre-war period, and the Man meets the Woman and they get much closer together, and during this romance the Experimenter (Jacques Ledoux) and his team try to send him to the future. In the future he meets technologically advanced people who give him a power unit to regenerate those in society destroyed, and when he returns his mission has been a success, with the people of the future contacting him once again. They tell the Man that they can help him escape his imprisonment, but he instead wants to return to the past and be with the Woman, but when he is transported he is unable to find her, and he is followed to be killed. In the end the Man finally realises the incident he witnesses as a child and haunted his memories through to adulthood, it was his own death. The World War III concept makes it an interesting story, and being told with nothing more than stills makes it an interesting watch, I will admit bits of it were difficult to understand, but overall it is a different short classic science-fiction. Very good!

Chris Markers brilliant 29 minute film about a man from the future who's vivid memory of the past is used by the victors of world war three in the hope of allowing him to travel in time so that he could save the future. This simple, haunting film, told simply by narration and still photographs, is one of the true masterpieces of cinema. It sounds as though it should be un-cinematic, and yet it has wonderful sense of place and times thanks to the stark black and white photography. Its a wonderful look at memory and our desire to live in the past. I've seen it any number of times and it knocks me on my butt every time I see it. (If the plot sounds familiar it was used by Terry Gilliam for his over produced film 12 Monkeys.) Le Jette is a masterpiece and one of the great films of cinema

The Third World War is over. Paris has been destroyed. The Earth is no longer habitable. People cluster in underground caves as scientists conduct experiments. The film explains, "The only hope for survival lay in time: a hole in time through which to send food, medicines, sources of energy. The aim of the experiments was to send emissaries into time to summon the past and the future to the aid of the present." A man (Davos Hanich) "volunteers" because he is haunted by an image from his childhood. In his mind he sees a woman (Helene Chatelain) standing at the edge of a jetty at the Orly Airport while a man runs toward her… a shot rings out…the man falls…dying. The volunteer travels back in time, then forward, then back again. Images morph into one another, haunting, frightening. It is over in 29 minutes.

Using black and white still photography (except for one shot) and a voice-over narration, Chris Marker's 1962 film, La Jetee, is one of the most enigmatic and thought provoking science fiction films ever made. The film takes us into the mind of a man and looks at memory, loss, dreams, and destiny. Sent back to try to save the human race, he and the woman meet again. He sees the world as it was before the war: with "real children", "a real bedroom", and "real birds". The narrator speaks: "They are without memories, without plans. Time builds itself painlessly around them. Their only landmarks are the flavor of the moment they are living and the markings on the walls." They fall in love. She calls him "my ghost". Is this happening only in his mind or is he reassembling the past? They go for walks and to a strange museum filled with mounted representations of extinct animals. Then it stops.

Having perfected their technique, the scientists now send the man into the future. Human beings have regained the Earth. He tells his story to them. The future beings give him a power supply to take back to restart humanity's industries. Now he is expendable, he suspects he is going to be killed. The people from the future visit him, offering a sanctuary in their own time. Instead, he chooses to go back in time to the woman he loves, and then meets his strange destiny in a moment of dark beauty that will remain with you forever.