Last Year at Marienbad
A leading figure of the Nouveau Roman movement and the screenwriter of Last Year at Marienbad, an aesthetic and narrative manifesto of 1960s cinema, Alain Robbe-Grillet liked to play games. He went on to direct a dozen feature films, all poking fun at the blurred lines between fantasy and reality, while also disrupting time and space. This program features a few key films from his early directorial period.
Winner of the Golden Lion, 1961 Venice International Film Festival
In a grand baroque palace, a man claims to have met, last year, a woman with a disturbing husband. Screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet, who simultaneously published a ciné-roman (Les Éditions de minuit) adapting the film's storyline.
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais was a French director, screenwriter, and editor. As the director of Hiroshima, mon amour (1959) and Last Year at Marienbad (1961), he quickly became regarded as one of the major figures of the French New Wave and one of the fathers of European cinematic modernity, alongside Roberto Rossellini, Ingmar Bergman, and Michelangelo Antonioni, for his way of challenging classical cinema grammar and deconstructing linear narration. A filmmaker who enjoyed experimentation and was able to question himself with each new project, Alain Resnais was recognized for his ability to create new forms and enrich the codes of cinematic representation by blending it with other arts: literature, theater, music, painting, and comics. His work encompasses a wide range of themes such as memory, political engagement, intimacy, death, and dreams.
