Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

In Alain Resnais’ infamous art-house teaser, from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet, a male guest at a chateau claims he met a woman there the year before.

Following the international acclaim for Hiroshima mon amour (1959), scripted by Marguerite Duras, Alain Resnais returned with an enigmatic film puzzle that has had critics and audiences arguing over its meaning (or lack of) ever since.

Continuing his affiliation with experimental Nouveau Roman writers, Marienbad is based on a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet about a man, ‘X’, who meets a woman, ‘A’, at a gathering at a grand chateau and attempts to convince her that they met the previous year, probably at Marienbad.

Featuring stately, gliding camera movements about the house and grounds, and a disconcerting fracturing of time which seems to collapse past and present, Resnais’ film weaves an intoxicatingly surreal atmosphere that comes as close as cinema has ever done to the logic of a dream.

1961 France, Italy
Directed by
Alain Resnais
Written by
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Featuring
Giorgio Albertazzi, Delphine Seyrig, Sacha Pitoëff

Ranked in The Greatest Films of All Time poll

Sight and Sound

Who voted for Last Year at Marienbad

Critics

Tunico Amâncio
Brazil
Marco de Blois
Canada
Philip Brophy
Australia
Paul Buck
UK
David Flint
UK
François Jost
France
Tara Judah
Australia/UK
Ehsan Khoshbakht
UK/Iran
Jihoon Kim
South Korea
Miklós Kiss
Netherlands
Pauline Kleijer
Netherlands
Occitane Lacurie
France
Tim Lucas
USA
Storm Patterson
UK
Wendy Russell
UK
Hannes Schüpbach
Switzerland
Stephen Thrower
UK

Directors

Peter Greenaway
UK
Lucile Hadžihalilović
france
Marcos Mereles
UK
Babak Payami
Iran/Canada
Timothy Quay
USA
Heng Yang
China
Shengze Zhu
China/USA

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