The Film Sufi

Time 2020-06-24 21:02:31

Web Name: The Film Sufi

WebSite: http://www.filmsufi.com

ID:10054

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On the Waterfront (1954) stands as one of the most famous and honored films of its period and for a number of reasons [1]. It was nominated for twelve Oscars (Academy Awards) and won eight of them, including those for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. And in 2007 it was ranked by the American Film Institute as the nineteenth-greatest American movie of all time [2]. It is also probably actor Marlon Brando s most famous performance [3]. In addition, there were socio-political aspects of the film that were associated with controversial political activities of the time. The film's story was inspired by a series of articles, Crime on the Waterfront, by Malcolm Johnson that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1949.Oscar-winning director Elia Kazan was already famous as both a stage director and film director, and in particular, he was noted for directing dramas that had social ramifications. And such was the case here, too, in On the Waterfront, which concerned corruption among longshoremen s dock workers unions in the U.S. The film is a drama about a longshoreman who is asked to testify against union corruption under threatening circumstances. But that was precisely a situation that Kazan, himself, had faced in real life when he was called in 1952 by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC to testify about his past membership in the American Communist Party and to provide names of professional colleagues who had also been members. Facing the threat of being black-listed, Kazan did supply some names, and for that he was later accused in the film profession of being a traitor to the cause of free expression. Anyway, some critics have since felt that On the Waterfront was Kazan s answer to this criticism. Although this matter may be an interesting topic of discussion for some, to me it is a distraction from looking at the film s own merits, and I will not discuss it further here. For those interested, you can find more information about this HUAC issue here [4,5].Certainly On the Waterfront had its own merits on which to stand [6,7,8]. The film featured outstanding production values, and it won Oscars in this area for Best Story and Screenplay (Budd Schulberg), Best Cinematography (Boris Kaufman, who years earlier was the cinematographer for Jean Vigo s L Atalante (1934)), and Best Film Editing (Gene Milford). The acting was superb, as well. Oscar-winning Brando, of course, was famous for his Stanislavski-inspired Method acting, and he showed if off to good effect in this film. But there were four other acting performers who also received Oscar nominations Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, and Eva Marie Saint (in her first feature film appearance she would later memorably appear in Hitchcock s North by Northwest (1959)). One Oscar nominee whose contributions were, to me, of lesser value was musical composer Leonard Bernstein. Although I delighted in Bernstein s music for West Side Story (1961), his music here in On the Waterfront is often intrusive and distracting to the narrative flow.The story of On the Waterfront is dominated by five people (all Oscar nominated roles, by the way) who represent contrasting perspectives on life:Terry Malloy (played by Marlon Brando) is a longshoreman who had once had a promising career as a prize-fighter. His perspective now is to just look out for himself. At one point he says that his philosophy is do it to him before he does it to you . But he does have a conscience, and it is that side of him that some others appeal to.Father Barry (Karl Malden) is a local priest. He preaches that Christ is always beside you, but more importantly, he believes in reliance on the rule-of-law in order for justice to be maintained for all. Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) is the ruthless and corrupt longshoremen s union boss who will stop at nothing in order to maintain his supremacy.Charley "the Gent" Malloy (Rod Steiger) is Terry Malloy s older brother and the #2 man in the union hierarchy. He has conflicted loyalties he is an opportunist who profits from working under Johnny Friendly, but he also doesn t want to see harm come to his brother.Edie Doyle (Eva Marie Saint), a convent student studying to become a nun, falls in love with Terry. She believes in personal virtue, but she wants to run away with Terry in order to escape the widespread evil that she sees infecting the dockside.All of these characters are very theatrically played, and yet the raw reality of the dockside settings in Hoboken, New Jersey, near New York City, lend a quasi-neo-realistic feeling to the proceedings. But the five perspectives listed here form the basis of an ethical/moral debate that is at the heart of the story. The On the Waterfront narrative goes through about eight sequences that constitute the story. Each one of these segments features moral discussions about what is the right thing to do.1. An InjusticeEarly on Terry Malloy is shown unwittingly luring his popular workmate Joey Doyle into getting murdered by longshoremen s union thugs. Terry, who had thought that the union was just going to rough up Joey a little bit, goes to Mob-affiliated union boss Johnny Friendly to ask why Joey was murdered. He is sternly lectured by Johnny that Joey had agreed to testify to the Waterfront Crime Commission about union-Mob malfeasance and that therefore Joey had to be bumped off for disloyalty. This is the morality of the urban jungle, and it is the first of the moral exchanges that take place in the story.Meanwhile Joey s sister, Edie, is distraught over her brother s death, and she harshly scolds local priest Father Barry for his remote passivity about concerns on the ground. The outcome of this second moral exchange of the story is that it inspires Father Barry to go the dockside and become a waterfront priest .At the dockside we see just h ow precarious is the work situation for the dock workers. The hopeful workers gather on the pier each day hoping to be chosen by the union foreman for a day s work. Many are not selected (somewhat like today s gig-economy, but worse). When Father Barry sees how unhappy the workers are, he invites them to come for a meeting at the church, where they can talk freely.2. The Church MeetingHaving heard about the upcoming church meeting, union officer Charley Malloy gets his younger brother Terry to attend the meeting and to record what happens. At the meeting, which is attended by some of the workers and Edie, the third moral exchange takes place. Worker Kayo Dugan (Pat Henning) explains to Father Barry that all the workers are afraid to speak out about mob-union wrongdoings, and so they follow a policy of D and D deaf and dumb. Father Barry counters by urging them to believe in the rightfulness of the rule-of-law and that he will stand with them if they speak out against injustice.However, the meeting is then broken up by baseball-bat-wielding Mob hooligans who beat and injure the workers as they flee the church. In the turmoil, Terry manages to usher Edie out to safety.3. Terry and Edie As Terry walks Edie home, they gradually get to know each other. Thanks in part to the fact that Edie still doesn t know about the part that Terry played in her brother s death, a mutual amorous attraction tentatively develops. This is one of the most sensitive and beautiful parts of the film, and it is during these sequences that the fourth moral exchange takes place. Edie is attracted to Terry, but she is politely appalled by the outright selfishness that Terry professes. At one point their contrasting views are highlighted when Edie proclaims shouldn't everybody care about everybody else? and further that everybody is part of everybody else while Terry counters by saying that his own philosophy is do it to him before he does it to you . 4. The Death of KayoIt is then revealed that Kayo Dugan, inspired by Father Barry s words at the church meeting, had gone to the Waterfront Crime Commission to testify against the union. The next day Johnny Friendly arranges to have Kayo killed in a staged accident that Terry witnesses in horror. Father Barry arrives at the dockside scene and proclaims that Kayo s death is nothing less than a crucifixion. His ensuing impromptu sermon about Christ Christ is always with you visibly moves Terry, whose conscience is finally starting to be stirred.There are further moral exchanges that Terry has with both Father Barry and Edie that lead to his confession to them concerning his role in Joey Doyle s death. As we might expect, Edie is horrified by this revelation and shuns further engagement with Terry.5. Terry and CharleyWith Terry having been served a subpoena by the Waterfront Crime Commission, Johnny Friendly is worried about the loyalty of Terry, and he orders Charley to turn his brother around or he will have him killed. So Charley goes to pickup Terry, and they have a famous conversation in the backseat of the cab. Charley offers Terry, in turn, entreaties, bribes, and threats, but to no avail. Terry is depressed at the kind of person he has become, and he wants to do something that will help him turn his life around. Recalling a time when he had, at Charley s behest, ruined his promising career by throwing a crucial boxing match so that Johnny Friendly could win a big wager, he laments to Charley: I could have had class. I could have been a contender. I could have been somebody . . . instead of a bum. They agree to part, and Terry gets out of the cab, while Charley, unknowingly, lets the cabbie take him to his own execution at the hands of the Mob.6. Terry and Edie AgainTerry now goes to Edie s apartment and forces his way in. Then he forces his affections on her, and despite the misgivings she had felt towards him, she succumbs to his embrace. But immediately they here a voice from outside on the street calling on Terry to come down and help his brother Charlie. When Terry goes down, he sees his brother s corpse hung up on a meat-hook. Edie pleads with Terry for them to run away together, but Terry wants revenge. He goes, armed with the gun his brother had given him, to Friendly s bar, looking to knock off his nemesis. Johnny Friendly isn t there at that moment, but Father Barry shows up and struggles to dissuade Terry from violent revenge. He tells Terry he can get his revenge in the courtroom tomorrow, by using the truth.7. The CourtroomIn the courtroom Terry and all the union officers are there. With Johnny Friendly casting menacing glares at him, Terry testifies anyway, and he heroically tells the truth about what he knows of Joey Doyle s murder. This testimony will probably lead to Johnny Friendly s indictment. Now the film could have ended here on a triumphant note. But the story continues, and what now transpires is somewhat problematic. After his courtroom testimony, Terry is shunned by neighbors as a stool pigeon . And when he goes up to his apartment rooftop and looks at Joey Doyle s coop of pigeons that he had been guiltily looking after since Joey s death, he sees that all the pigeons have now been killed. Edie shows up and again pleads that they should run away together from this dockside world of D-and-D. But Terry is still obsessed with revenge. 8. The Finale at the DocksideThe next day Terry goes to the dockside hiring session, but the union foreman, unsurprisingly, refuses to hire him. So, with the gathered workers just timidly watching, Terry walks over to the dockside union shack, where, dismissing Father Barry s past pleas to him to restrain himself, he calls for Johnny Friendly to come out for a confrontation. When Johnny Friendly emerges, Terry defiantly boasts how proud he is to have exposed the corrupt boss. The ensuing heated argument soon degenerates into a scuffle, and then a gang of Friendly s henchmen beat up Terry to within an inch of life. With Terry still lying knocked-out on the edge of the pier, Friendly orders the workers into the warehouse to start working. But they say they won t work without Terry. Father Barry and Edie now arrive, and they revive the battered Terry and help him to his feet. Father Barry insists to the bloodied and barely conscious Terry that to win the war , he must walk unaided up the pier walkway and into the warehouse. With great effort, Terry manages to do this, and the other workers follow after him, symbolizing their abandonment of Johnny Friendly s corrupt union.So the essence of On the Waterfront, what is at its very heart, is a series of exchanges in each of the eight segments that concern morality and conscience. The corrupt, unconscionable dog-eat-dog world is symbolized to various degrees by Charlie Malloy (passive) and Johnny Friendly (aggressive). And the virtuous path is symbolized by Edie Doyle (passive) and Father Barry (aggressive). Thus Edie is mostly concerned with personal virtue and just wants to run away with Terry to somewhere where they can be alone. On the other hand, Father Barry is concerned with social justice. He wants to fight for the benefit of all the dock workers. Interestingly, however, even though both Father Barry and Edie are more or less people of the cloth , they do not spend much time talking about praying to God. Their values seem just as much humanistic as spiritual. Father Barry s main instrument for social justice, for example, is adherence to the rule-of-law, rather than divine intervention or divine retribution in the afterlife.Terry, and in particular his conscience, is the target of all the moral assertions of the above four people. He starts out in total innocence, but he is forced to face up to the various claims and demands of the key people in his life. To some extent he is something of a moral guinea pig; but in the end Father Barry s passionate recommendations to have faith in the rule-of-law seem to win him over.Whether or not you buy the ending to On the Waterfront, though, will probably depend on your personal taste. It is not very clear what exactly has been accomplished by Terry s act of personal bravery and sacrifice. Certainly it was good that he did not, in the end, resort to vengeful violence with his gun. But will the worker solidarity that seems to have been momentarily evoked by Terry s heroic actions endure and have lasting consequences? That we don t know. Johnny Friendly is still out there, and Terry s plans or way forward are not at all clear. Nevertheless, we can still feel exhilaration over the uplifting change that has taken place inside Terry.And in any case, we can also appreciate On the Waterfront s uniquely moving cinematic presentation that combines (a) theatrically dramatic acting on the part of the five main characters with (b) the film s emotive mix of expressionistic and neorealistic cinematography. Notes: Awards and honors , On the Waterfront , Wikipedia, (20 May 2020). AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) , American Film Institute, (20 June 2007). A. H. Weiler, Brando Stars in Film Directed by Kazan , The New York Times, (29 July 1954). On The Waterfront , Buffalo Film Seminars, (29 March 2000). Peter Biskind, The Politics of Power in On the Waterfront , Film Quarterly (1975) 29 (1): 25 38.Michael Almereyda, On the Waterfront: Everybody Part of Everybody Else , The Criterion Collection, (19 February 2013). Roger Ebert, On the Waterfront , Great Movie, RogerEbert.com, (21 March 1999). Jonathan Rosenbaum, On The Waterfront , Jonathan Rosenbaum, (1 January 1990). There is something brilliant about Joseph Losey s The Go-Between (1971), even though, as I will discuss, the film has some flaws. Based on L. P. Hartley s novel, The Go-Between (1953), the film was the third and last pairing of director Losey and scriptwriter Harold Pinter, following The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967). Although those two earlier collaborations resulted in outstanding films, The Go-Between is, to me, the best of the three.Perhaps because the film largely concerns the coming-of-age struggles of a young boy in a class-dominated society, the film seems to have been more appreciated in Europe than in America [1,2,3]. There it won the Grand Prix (aka the Palme d Or) at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival, and it was nominated for an astonishing twelve British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards Best Film, Best Direction, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor (2 people), Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Soundtrack, and Most Promising Newcomer. One person who wasn t nominated but who should have been was Michel Legrand, whose haunting piano-based score is a key contributing feature to the film s moody greatness.Although I said the film concerns the coming-of-age struggles of a young boy, this is not just a coming-of-age story. The boy s perspective serves as a lens on a number of personal and social themes, includingthe impact of lasting memoriesthe nature and value of gentilitythe distinctions between love and romantic passion and the role sex plays in these feelingsthe degree to which femininity and womanhood both empowered and enslaved women in traditional upperclass British society.Then it opens in around 1900 showing twelve-year-old Leo Colston (sensitively played by Dominic Guard) having come as a summer guest to Brandham Hall, the wealthy family estate of his school friend, Marcus Maudsley (Richard Gibson), in Norfolk, England. Leo comes from less wealthy family circumstances, and he struggles to live up to the proud presumptuousness of his rich classmate and his family. However, Leo is cordially made to feel welcome by some members of the family circle Marcus s genteel mother, Mrs. Maudsley (Margaret Leighton); Marcus s beautiful older sister, Marian (Julie Christie); and Hugh (Edward Fox), who as Viscount Trimingham is the owner of the estate.Probably as a defense mechanism to the bullying rampant in English boarding schools, Leo has become known in school as someone who can cast magical curses on those who bully him. Leo s curses and incantations seem to have constituted a significant element in the novel, but here in the film, although they are occasionally shown, they don t amount to much, and they are only a distraction [3]. So their inclusion is one of the film s weaknesses.Another weakness is occasioned by brief and cryptic flash-forwards (the first one of which appears early on in the film) to a time some fifty years later, showing an elderly man (Michael Redgrave), who we will eventually learn is the aged Leo Colston, coming to visit Brandham Hall. The viewer can guess this is a flash-forward by the 1950-ish automobile shown in the shot, but its significance is initially unclear. There are about a dozen of these flash-forwards interspersed throughout the film, and only at the end will their meaning be cleared up. (At that point the viewer might come to the conclusion that the entire film up to this point has actually been an extended flashback into the past.) This flash-forward/flashback mechanism was a significant narrative element in the novel, but it doesn t work well in the film [1,2,3]. The flash-forwards here in the film are too sketchy and only a source of confusion early on.Anyway, as the story proceeds, Marcus soon comes down with the measles, and so Leo has lost his only playmate at Brandham Hall. Looking for ways to distract himself, Leo now wanders over to play in the haystack at the neighboring Black Farm, where he meets the tenant farmer there, Ted Burgess (Alan Bates). Ted is a roughhewn member of the working class, whose unpolished manner contrasts markedly with that of the high-class crowd over at Brandham Hall. After Ted attends to Leo s skinned knee, which was injured in a fall off the haystack, the two of them become friendly, and Ted asks Leo to carry a secret written message of his to Marian. Not knowing what the message might contain, Leo willingly and clandestinely delivers the message to Marian. Soon Leo becomes the secret postman for Marian and Ted, repeatedly delivering confidential messages between the two young adults, who, because of class distinctions, do not publicly socialize with each other. So Leo is their go-between.One person Marian does sometimes socialize with is Hugh, who is a dashing young gentleman but whose face was severely scarred earlier in the Boer conflict. Leo likes both Hugh and Ted, but he gradually suspects something special is going on between Marian and Ted, and the rest of the family is not supposed to know about it. This is disturbing for Leo, because he clearly has a crush on Marian. On occasions when he is alone with Ted, the naive Leo keeps asking him what it is that goes on between men and women in secret. Couching his inquisitiveness, he asks Ted how it came to be that one of his horses came to have a foal. Ted evasively responds that the mare had engaged in spooning with another horse, but he doesn t explain what spooning is. Eventually, Marcus recovers from the measles, and they all attend a cricket match involving local participants. In the match Ted is clearly the star batsman, repeatedly knocking bowler Hugh s pitches for boundaries and sixes, and Leo surprisingly makes a spectacular catch of a ball hit by Ted. Afterwards in the clubhouse, both Ted and Leo sing songs for the collected participants, and Leo is feeling more and more like an accepted member of this social group.But afterwards, Marcus tells Leo a secret: his sister Marian is engaged to be married to Hugh. This news disturbs Leo, and he separately tells both Marian and Ted, without explanation, that he wants to stop being their secret postman. This doesn t go down well with Marian and Ted, and they both express their anger with Leo.Leo is still puzzled about romantic passions, and one day he now asks Hugh to explain a story that Leo had read about two men who fought a duel over one of the men s wife. But, Leo tells Hugh, he himself suspects that it was actually the wife who was at fault. Hugh responds solemnly that nothing is ever a lady s fault .Leo later also overhears a guarded conversation between Hugh and Marian s father (Michael Gough) that seems to indicate, to the viewer, that they know something is going on between Ted and Marian. The polite solution to this problem, according to Hugh, is to have Ted go off and join the army. When Leo goes to say his goodbye to Ted, he asks him if he will really join the army. Ted resignedly answers that he will do that if that is what Marian wants. These are indications that in those days, the feminine ideal not only restricted women, it impose its restrictions on men, too.And when Leo goes to say his goodbye to Marian, he asks her, Why don t you marry Ted? But she only glumly responds, I can t . Not fully understanding, Leo then asks her, But why are you marrying Hugh? And Marian tearfully replies, Because I must. This is a moving articulation of the coercive social forces at play in this story, and the way they can have tragic consequences. Finally, there is Leo s 13th birthday party held at the estate, and Marian has said she is visiting family friend Nanny Robson and will arrive a little later, at 6pm. When it starts raining and the family, seeking to provide Marian with safe transport home, learn that Marian is not to be found at Nanny Robson home, Mrs. Maudsley grabs Leo and says the two of them must go to where she suspects Marian must be. They rush over to Black Farm and find Marian and Ted making love in one of the stalls. We are left to mostly imagine what transpires next, but we do see that this untimely exposure did lead to Ted s suicide.The concluding scene is an exercise in grim resignation. It moves the viewer to the flash-forward time-period fifty years later. Marian meets with Leo and learns that Leo, traumatized by what happened fifty years earlier, has led a dry, shriveled life as a lifelong bachelor. He could never overcome the feelings of guilt and horror that arose from the events with which he was connected back then when he was on the verge of adolescence. Marian tells him that her husband, Hugh, and her son had died long ago, but that her young grandson, who physically resembles Ted Burgess, is still alive. And she tells Leo that she has one last message for him to deliver to her grandson. Tell him everything, she says, especially tell him who his real grandfather was and tell him about the joyous love she had shared with that man. Overall, and despite the two flaws I mentioned earlier, The Go-Between is a brilliant and thought-provoking piece. It gets better upon repeated viewings. In fact I would say that the decision on the part of Losey and Pinter to de-emphasize the plot elements associated with those aforementioned flaws, i.e the flash-forwards and Leo s ritualistic curses, and instead just concentrate on Leo s anguished existential experiences was the right one. That s what we remember about this film. In addition, I feel that the camera work and editing are outstanding, and the acting performances across the board are superb. Special kudos are due to Dominic Guard whose delicate and emotive portrayal of the young Leo Colston is particularly good. But perhaps the most crucial contribution to the film s greatness is, as I suggested above, Michel Legrand s piano-based score. It establishes and sustains a mood of intense feeling that provides an emotional coloring lying at the heart of this film. Leo was the go-between but he missed out on the precious and all-too-brief moments of life to which he was only a dimly comprehending vehicle. Legrand s music and Losey s direction expressionistically conjure up these feelings in an inimitable way. Notes:Roger Ebert, The Go-Between , RogerEbert.com, (1 January 1971). Tony Mastroianni, Go-Between May Be Classic , Cleveland Press. (23 December 1971). Christopher C. Hudgins, Harold Pinter s The Go-Between: The Courage To Be , Cycnos, 14 (1), (June 2008). Alain Resnais s second feature film, Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, 1961), was so spectacularly innovative that it became a landmark in the history of cinema [1,2]. There has always been widespread critical discussion not only on the film s ultimate meaning but even on just what it was about [1,2,3,4]. Nevertheless, the film won the Golden Lion at the 1961 Venice Film Festival, and it is ranked in the British Film Institute s Directors poll as one of the 100 Greatest Films of All Time [5]. Resnais was already known as a respected and innovative film director, having made the famous documentary Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard, 1955) and his even more highly acclaimed feature, Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). In fact both Resnais and Last Year at Marienbad s script-writer, Alain Robbe-Grillet, were considered to be members of the French intellectual avant-garde of the late 1950s. Resnais was loosely associated with the French Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) film movement (which included the likes of François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and Claude Chabrol). And Robbe-Grillet was associated with the Nouvelle Roman (New Novel) movement (which included the likes of Nathalie Sarraute, Claude Simon, Marguerite Duras, Julio Cortázar, and Italo Calvino). So with such an intellectual pedigree behind Last Year at Marienbad, critics could expect a challenge, and that s what they got. The story of Last Year at Marienbad is concerned with an extended encounter between an unnamed man and woman who are staying at an elaborate Baroque hotel that has been fashioned from some palatial aristocratic estate. The man tries to convince the woman that they had met the previous year and had fallen in love and that they had agreed to meet again at this hotel in order to run away together. But the woman politely tells this man that she has no recollection of ever having met him, much less of ever having agreed to meet him again here this year. Because of the intimate nature of their extended conversation s subject matter, the man has to meet the woman at various opportune moments and circumstances when they can talk privately; so their conversation is fragmented. Complicating the man s problems further is the fact that the woman he desires appears to already have a romantic partner, who may or may not be her husband. So in order to discuss things further, I will refer to the three unnamed characters in this story by the names that were used to reference them in the screenplay: X (played by Giorgio Albertazzi) is the man seeking to reconnect with the woman he allegedly met last year. A (Delphine Seyrig) is the woman sought by X. M (Sacha Pitoëff) is the alleged husband of A.Note that this story, which consists mostly of X s account of what allegedly happened in the past and which constitutes the bulk of what the film shows us, is anything but straightforward. Much of it is presented in a dreamlike, stream-of-consciousness manner that suggests that the viewer is privy to the sometimes confused imaginings of the main character. This interiorized effect is further accentuated by the persistent, almost funereal, organ music (by Francis Seyrig, Delphine Seyrig s brother) in the background. The story begins with long tracking shots down mostly vacant corridors of the Baroque hotel, while a disjointed and repetitive voice-over describes recollections of a mostly suffocating social atmosphere there. Eventually the camera tracks up to door of a chamber inside of which a theatrical play is being presented to the seated hotel guests. In the narrative scheme of the remembered events of this story, the performance of this play takes place at the end, when X may be in the act of running away with A. Anyway, it is referred to early on, and the play the guests are shown watching here, titled Rosmer, is probably a version of Henrik Ibsen s play Rosmersholmz, a drama about memory and guilt. But an astute viewer may notice that a placard on the room door advertising Rosmer says it is written by Niala Sianser , which is this film s director s name spelled backwards. Such is the malleability of objective reality in this tale.Afterwards, the hotel guests are shown in the lounge standing in clusters and seemingly chatting, but they are in almost (but not quite) frozen in static positions, as if these are images from X s memory. Gradually we move to scenes showing X with A, first dancing with her in a hotel lounge and later talking with her somewhere apart from others. He is trying to convince her that they met here last year or perhaps, he says, they met at Frederiksbad, Karlstadt, Marienbad, or Baden-Salsa. So it is clear that his own memory is not perfect. In any case, he insists, the two of them fell in love back then, but A had told him to wait for a year before they would be free to run away together. But A demurely continues to insist that she doesn t remember X at all.The rest of the film continues along the lines of this extended conversation, with some interspersed scenes showing occasional interactions with M, who is A s presumed partner. M is an austere, somewhat forbidding character who contrasts markedly with X. While X represents romantic exceptionalism, M represents uncompromising, rule-following rigidity. M likes to engage in target-practice shooting games with his gun and in the stick-drawing table game of nim, at which he never loses.Note that as the film proceeds, the viewer may begin to have questions concerning the reality of what he or she is seeing:Is the story of what X claims happened between himself and A one year ago a figment of his imagination? Is what is happening now also a figment of X s imagination?There is conflicting evidence in this regard. X and A are sometimes shown conversing on the patio outside the hotel next to a statue of mythical figures. But the background garden seen behind this statue is markedly different for different scenes of this conversation. And although the focalization of the film is mostly on X, there are a few sometimes contradictory shots and scenes shown at which X was not present. In one bedroom scene, the otherwise dour and taciturn M professes his love for A. And there is also even one shot in which M is shown shooting and killing A. So how real is what is being presented in those shots?At the end of the film, supposedly during the performance of the play Rosmer, X and A meet at an appointed time and place in the hotel and apparently depart together, at last. Or do they? It s not clear. Given these ambiguities, there have been various critical interpretations of Last Year at Marienbad. And these different opinions may be associated with questions concerning who was the real author of Marienbad, Robbe Grillet or Resnais? Robbe-Grillet originally submitted a detailed shooting script and storyboard for the film. But he was not present for the shooting of the film, and Resnais introduced some changes, including the use of the interiorizing organ music. In any case these two creators probably had some conflicting perspectives [6]. According to Resnais, Robbe-Grillet used to insist that it was he who wrote Marienbad, without question, and that Resnais's filming of it was a betrayal but that since he found it very beautiful he did not blame him for it. [1] Memory and NarrativeIt is true that most all of our memories are narrative constructions. And these involve a selection of supposedly factual details that fit into the narratives we construct. So the film can be considered to be a creative exploration of this aspect of reality [3]. Resnais film may be a study in the workings of memory, but not necessarily memory as guarantor of history and truth. Marienbad may also be about memory as power, false memory masquerading as history. Socio-politicalSince Resnais s earlier films featured an emphasis on mass social empathy, it would likely cause some critics to look in this direction. So some people view the film as showing a decadent pre-War European culture (represented by M) that was oblivious of the social issues that were threatening it. The whole film is then seen as a parody of such escapism [3,7].Romanticism vs. ClassicismTo some extent X represents Romanticism and M represents Classicism. This contrast is sometimes discussed in the context of comparisons between English Gardens (Romanticism ) and French Gardens (Classicism). And the Baroque hotel s surrounding French Gardens offer a visual reminder of this contrast. Male vs. FemaleTo some extent A may represent an embodiment of the eternal female mystery to X [3]. It is interesting that the female character, A, is said to have been the product of Resnais, while the two male characters, X and M, are said to have been products or Robbe-Grillet [8].But then there are also some critics who just love to be immersed in the mesmerizing narrative flow of Last Year at Marienbad, without giving analytical thought to the film s ultimate meaning [2,9,10,11,12]. Even Robbe-Grillet, himself, observed in the introduction to the published screenplay of the film [1]:"(E)ither the spectator will try to reconstitute some 'Cartesian' scheme the most linear, the most rational he can devise and this spectator will certainly find the film difficult if not incomprehensible; or else the spectator will let himself be carried along by the extraordinary images in front of him and to this spectator, the film will seem the easiest he has ever seen: a film addressed exclusively to his sensibility, to his faculties of sight, hearing, feeling.""Viewing the film again, I expected to have a cerebral experience, to see a film more fun to talk about than to watch. What I was not prepared for was the voluptuous quality of 'Marienbad', its command of tone and mood, its hypnotic way of drawing us into its puzzle, its austere visual beauty. Yes, it involves a story that remains a mystery, even to the characters themselves. But one would not want to know the answer to this mystery. Storybooks with happy endings are for children. Adults know that stories keep on unfolding, repeating, turning back on themselves, on and on until that end that no story can evade. And that is more or less the way that I look at Last Year at Marienbad, too. It is truly a hypnotic cinematic dream. Notes:

TAGS:The Film Sufi 

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