'Perhaps more than those of any other modern director, the films of Alain Resnais are synonymous with European art cinema. Hailed as groundbreakingly innovative and intellectual, his films are also lampooned as elliptical, poetic, and populated with impeccably dressed characters adrift in inexplicable existential dilemmas. In truth, Resnais’s legacy – soon to be displayed in a traveling retrospective – remains intact.
'Often crowned the theoretician of the French New Wave, Resnais was in fact the most schooled in actual film production. While his cohorts – Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, et al. – were busy raving about their favorite directors for Cahiers du Cinema, Resnais had been working as an actor, editor, screenwriter and assistant director on industrials and occasional features throughout the ’40s and ’50s. And his early films were odd 16mm, black-and-white documentary shorts focusing on art and artists, such as Van Gogh, Guernica and Gauguin.
'Rarely revisited, these shorts, Resnais scholar James Monaco suggests, "strangely mirror the features he was later to shoot in the ’60s," foreshadowing his complex treatment of documentary, time, memory, postcapitalist imperialism and, most importantly, the role of the artist. Throughout his career, the artist – and, by extension art itself – remains a central concern, either in the form of homages – in On Connaît la Chanson to Dennis Potter, in La Vie Est Un Roman to three French filmmakers, Melies, L’Herbier and Rohmer – or as character ( in Providence); or in the form of creative collaborations (with poet Jean Cayrol in Night and Fog and Muriel, novelists Maguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet in Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Last Year in Marienbad, respectively, or cartoonist Jules Feiffer in I Want to Go Home).
'While Godard and others attempted to rewrite cinema through the style of Hollywood B-movies, Resnais’s obsession with memory, time and psychological subjectivity continues a French tradition expressed in both the philosophy of Henri Bergson and in the novels of Marcel Proust. In his documentary short Night and Fog Resnais leads a hallucinatory journey into the Nazi Holocaust through use of archival footage and a poetic subject. In his first feature, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, he turned his technique around, using a faux-documentary style to examine the real and ethical aftershocks of the A-bomb’s blast. By the time of Resnais’s 1961 masterpiece Last Year at Marienbad, history has collapsed into the fashionable relics of the European spa in which his nameless lead characters rewrite the story of their relationship (as well as any expectation of a coherent cinematic syntax) with each new scene.
'In the almost 40 years hence, Resnais has continued to challenge our comprehension of film language. And the force of his early innovations led the way for many filmmakers to push their own boundaries and assumptions.'-- James Monaco
___
Stills
______
Further
Alain Resnais @ IMDb
Alain Resnais @ The Criterion Collection
'Alain Resnais on the death of cinema'
'How the 90-Year-Old Alain Resnais Preserves the Past'
'Alain Resnais: vive la différence'
'The Discreet Obscurity Of Alain Resnais'
Jonathan Rosenbaum interviews Alain Resnais
'The Game'
'Alain Resnais and Cahiers du Cinema 1951-1968'
Alain Resnais's films @ Mondo Digital
Alain Resnais @ TSPDT
'Alain Resnais and the Enigmatic Art of Memory'
'Meet the Argentine Jew who shared a nightmare with director Alain Resnais'
'Cinema After Alain Resnais'
'Alain Resnais: Time and Thought, Past and Presence'
____
Extras
Alain Resnais interview (1961)
Alain Resnais interview excerpt (2012)
Cinéma selon Alain Resnais: L'inclassable
Recut Alain Resnais - Blow up
_______
Interview
___________________
15 of Alain Resnais's 51 films
____________________
Alain Resnais & Chris Marker Les Statues Meurent Aussi (Statues Also Die) (1953)
'The film was commissioned to Marker and Alain Resnais by the journal Présence Africaine in 1950. According to Resnais, the original intent was not to make an anticolonial film, but only a film about African art. However when the filmmakers started to do research, they were struck by the fact that African art was exhibited at the ethnological Musée de l'Homme, and not the Louvre like art from elsewhere. As research continued, the disintegrating effects of colonialism became more prominent in the filmmakers' approach to the subject. The film first premiered in 1953. In 1954 it received the Prix Jean Vigo. Because of the sensitive subject, the sharp criticism of colonialism urged the French National Center of Cinematography to censor the second half of the film until 1963. The first time the full version was publicly screened in France was in November 1968, as part of a program with thematically related short films, under the label "Cinéma d'inquiétude".'-- collaged
the entire film
_______________
Night and Fog (1955)
'François Truffaut once called Night and Fog “the greatest film ever made.” If you don’t believe me, here is the exact quote: “The effective war film is often the one in which the action begins after the war, when there is nothing but ruins and desolation everywhere: Rossellini’s Germany Year Zero (1947) and, above all, Alain Resnais’ Nuit et brouillard, the greatest film ever made.” Certainly it is one of the two or three most powerful and intelligent nonfiction films ever made (I hesitate to call it a documentary, for reasons that will follow); and it is also, among those many movies that have taken on the loaded subject matter of the Holocaust, perhaps the most aesthetically sophisticated and ethically irreproachable. Night and Fog is, in effect, an antidocumentary: we cannot “document” this particular reality, it is too heinous, we would be defeated in advance. What can we do, then? Resnais’ and Cayrol’s answer is: we can reflect, ask questions, examine the record, and interrogate our own responses. In short, offer up an essay. Moreover, by choosing to compress such enormous subject matter into only a half-hour (think, by contrast, of Claude Lanzmann’s over-nine-hour Shoah, [1985]), the filmmakers force themselves into the epigrammatic concision and synthesis of essayistic reflection.'-- Phillip Lopate
Excerpt
__________________
La chant de la styrène (1958)
'This cinematographic project is as poetic as it is technical in its depiction of the realm of plastics from its extraction from Nature to its final product in modern Civilization. The narration, thanks to R. Queneau, reminds of a mid 50's news real, as featured prior to blockbuster films in France, depicting the glory of Babylon lending a mechanical hand to the so-called imperfect aboriginals. Although this movie is closer to a dry documentary than anything else, a philosophic mind appreciative of essences and existenz will admire the exhaustiveness of the subject matter as well as the keen eye for detail. The film was an order by French industrial group Pechiney to highlight the merits of plastics. The commentary, narrated by Pierre Dux, was written by Raymond Queneau, all in alexandrines.'-- collaged
the entire film
_________________
Hiroshima mon amour (1959)
'“I think that in a few years, in ten, twenty, or thirty years, we will know whether Hiroshima mon amour was the most important film since the war, the first modern film of sound cinema.” That’s Eric Rohmer, in a July 1959 round-table discussion between the members of Cahiers du Cinéma’s editorial staff, devoted to Alain Resnais’ groundbreaking first feature. Rohmer’s remark is in perfect sync with the spirit of the film, which, as he says later in the discussion, “has a very strong sense of the future, particularly the anguish of the future.” Read nearly half a century later, this “anguish of the future” describes the peculiar sensation that runs through all of Resnais’ films, before and after Hiroshima. In fact, it’s the anguish of past, present, and future: the need to understand exactly who and where we are in time, a need that goes perpetually unsatisfied.'-- Kent Jones
Trailer
Excerpt
__________________
Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
'So much critical ink has been shed over Last Year at Marienbad that one might wonder if the flood of commentary, once receded, would take the film along with it. Alain Resnais’ second feature has been lavishly praised and royally slammed; awarded the Golden Lion at the 1961 Venice Film Festival and nominated for an Oscar, but also branded an “aimless disaster” by Pauline Kael; lauded by some as a great leap forward in the battle against linear storytelling and a worthy successor to Hoffmann, Proust, and Borges, dismissed by others as hopelessly old-fashioned. The ambivalence is understandable. Marienbad blatantly toys with our expectations regarding plotline, character development, continuity, conflict, resolution—all those elements we’ve come to expect from a satisfying motion picture. Like its nameless hero, the film relentlessly pursues us with a barrage of assertions while giving us little to hold on to as convincingly true, until in the end, we, like Delphine Seyrig’s equally nameless heroine, have only two choices: remain steadfast in our resistance to the seduction or just plain submit.'-- Mark Polizzotti
Trailer
Six scenes
_________
Muriel (1963)
'At a press conference at the Venice Film Festival in 1963, Resnais said that his film depicted "the malaise of a so-called happy society. ...A new world is taking shape, my characters are afraid of it, and they don't know how to face up to it."Muriel has been seen as part of a 'cinema of alienation' of the 1960s, films which "betray a sudden desperate nostalgia for certain essential values". A sense of disruption and uncertainty is constantly emphasised, not least by the style of jump-cutting between events. "The technique of observing absolute chronology while simultaneously following a number of characters and treating even casual passers-by in the same manner as the main characters gives rise to a hallucinatory realism." At the centre of the film lies the specific theme of the Algerian war, which had only recently been brought to its troubled conclusion, and which it had hitherto been almost impossible for French film-makers to address in a meaningful way.'-- collaged
Trailer
The final scene
________________
Je t'aime je t'aime (1968)
'Je t'aime, je t'aime is a 1968 French science fiction film directed by Alain Resnais. It was listed to compete at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but the festival was cancelled due to the countrywide wildcat strike that occurred in May 1968 in France. As with Chris Marker's La Jetee, a man is selected to participate in time travel experiments to his personal past. However, due to equipment malfunction, he experiences these events out of chronological sequence, cause and effect.'-- ARF
the entire film
___________
Stavisky (1974)
'With its high production-values and the popularity of its star actor, the film was enthusiastically received by the public in France, whereas, perhaps for the same reasons, it drew a cool response from many critics who felt that Resnais had betrayed his reputation for intellectual rigor. A British reviewer expressed several of the doubts which were felt by critics: "No one could fail to respond to the elegance of the fashion-plate costumes, the Art Deco interiors, the gleaming custom-built cars, the handsome grand hotels, and so on, all paraded before us to the tinkling thirties-pastiche foxtrot music of Stephen Sondheim... But Resnais's and Semprún's Stavisky is just not a very interesting figure... what he represents to the film's authors is not clear... What the picture does not do is use the Stavisky affair to make any larger comment upon the drift of twentieth-century life, or capitalist society, or even human gullibility... One's ultimate impression of the film is of an immense gap between the sophistication of its technique and the commonplace simple-minded notions it purveys."'-- collaged
Trailer
Excerpt
Excerpt
_____________
Providence (1977)
'Providence is no less an affront to the conventions of classical storytelling than, say, Last Year at Marienbad, but the story at the film’s core is disarmingly simple. Over the course of a single sleepless night, a cantankerous aging novelist imagines parts of his next book. These bizarre imagined scenes, starring the same four principal characters, make up the main body of the film. We realize, gradually, that the novelist has modeled these characters on members of his own family—his sons, Claude (Dirk Bogarde) and Kevin (David Warner), Claude’s wife, Sonia (Ellen Burstyn), and his own deceased wife, Molly, who, in this fictional fever-dream, is recast as Claude’s mistress, Helen (Elaine Stritch). The internal narrative, on shaky ground from the start, grows increasingly fractured and febrile as the night goes on. The author commentates on certain shots in gruff voice-over, sounding less like a narrator than a grouchy, confused old man recording DVD commentary for a film he hasn’t seen. The wrong characters suddenly intrude upon scenes like actors bungling their cues. Sets change from shot to shot. Ellen Burstyn’s character, Sonia, a bored housewife at the center of a limp love triangle, delivers ponderous lines like, “Kevin, I’m not overawed by the universe” with deadly intensity. At one point, in a surge of emotion, Sonia moves her lips, but the novelist’s gruff voice comes out like a bark. The jig is up; the strings on these character-puppets are brazenly visible.'-- Gus Reed
Trailer
Excerpt
_________________
Mon Oncle d'amerique (1980)
'Mon Oncle d'Amérique is an exhilarating fiction that takes the form of a series of dramatic essays about three highly motivated, extremely mixed-up persons. They are René Ragueneau (Gérard Depardieu), a successful textile company executive who is suddenly faced with the loss of his career; Jean Le Gall (Roger Pierre), an ambitious politician with a desire for total power, both private and public; and Janine Garnier (Nicole Garcia), Jean's mistress and a would-be actress who makes a noble sacrifice only to find that, like most noble sacrifices, it's a self-defeating gesture. Mon Oncle d'Amérique is a chatty movie, rather like the kind of nineteenth-century novel in which the author is always chiming in to comment on what's happening and to make observations that instruct and amuse. In this case, the author is Dr. Laborit, whom we see being interviewed in his laboratory by Mr. Resnais. The doctor, one of the people responsible for the development of drugs to control the emotions, is the wise, literate, unflappable host, a sort of Gallic Alistair Cooke, and Mon Oncle d'Amérique is the show.'-- Vincent Canby
the entire film
_______
Melo (1986)
'On its release the film met with a largely hostile reception from both critics and the public in France. Resnais attributed the film's failure to the unfamiliarity of the public with the world of the comic-strip and its personalities, which made it difficult to appreciate the confrontation of values which the film explored. The film failed to get distribution either in the United States or in Great Britain. Variety described it as a "stillborn satiric comedy". The producer of the film, Marin Karmitz, registered a substantial financial loss from the film's commercial flop, and was unable to engage in further production work for the next 18 months. He nevertheless continued to declare his support for what he regarded as one of Resnais's most important films, describing it as "a great film about death, and about the death of certain cultures". I Want to Go Home was shown at the 1989 Venice Film Festival, where it won awards for Alain Resnais and Jules Feiffer. The appearance of the film on DVD two decades after its original release led to some more sympathetic assessments, and recognition of its "blatantly nutty" humor.'-- collaged
Excerpt
________________
Smoking/No Smoking (1993)
'"Smoking" and "No Smoking" are two segments of the film which are based on closely connected plays. The original plays covered eight separate stories, which have been pared down to three each for these movies. At a certain point in the story of each segment, the five female characters (all played by Sabine Azema) and the four male characters (all played by Pierre Arditi) have their lives skillfully recapped in terms of "what might have happened" if they had made or failed to make certain choices. For example, "No Smoking" focuses chiefly on the relationship between the mild-mannered Miles Coombes and his infinitely more aggressive and ambitious wife, Rowena.'-- collaged
Preamble
Excerpt
____________
Same Old Song (2003)
'Resnais's film is a faithful adaptation of the operetta by Barde and Yvain. Its original dialogue was retained, even when outdated, and characters are unchanged except in one instance (Arlette); four of the original musical numbers were omitted because they were felt to slow up the action. Orchestration and some additional music was provided by Bruno Fontaine. The entire film was shot in a studio (in Arpajon). Jacques Saulnier, another of Resnais's longtime collaborators, provided elegant and sumptuous set designs, which together with the glamorous costumes designed by Jackie Budin complement the theatrical style of the acting, and frequent use of long camera shots enable a fluid staging of the musical numbers. Various cinematic devices are used both to intensify the characterizations (especially with close-ups and direct-to-camera asides), but also to distance the film spectator from the theatrical experience (e.g. dissolves to achieve characters' exits, overhead camera shots for some of the ensemble numbers).'-- collaged
Trailer
Excerpt
______________
Wild Grass (2009)
'Wild Grass is about an unlikely and fateful chain of events that to a young person might seem like coincidence but to an older one illustrates the likelihood that most of what happens in our lives comes about by sheer accident. This is the latest work by Alain Resnais, who may have learned this by experience: There’s a springtime in your life when you think it should add up and make sense, and an autumn when you think, the hell with it, anything can happen. Resnais has been making films since the dawn of the New Wave: Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959) and Last Year at Marienbad (1961). Now he’s 88. Preparing to write, I decided not to mention his age, in fear that some readers might think a director that age couldn’t possibly be engaging. But praise must be given. Wild Grass is carefree and anarchic, takes bold risks, spins in unexpected directions.'-- Roger Ebert
Trailer
Excerpts
__________________
You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet (2012)
'Mr. Resnais, who recently turned 91, has been exploring the slippery line between truth and illusion for a very long time, in playful and in somber moods. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet has a little of both, and is a testament to the filmmaker’s undiminished vitality. The title evokes a piece of ancient, almost mythic film history: that surreal, Orphic moment, associated in the popular mind with The Jazz Singer, when pictures began to talk. It also has a more primal meaning. The world and the people in it might grow old, but the imagination has the power to make everything new. And what look like artifacts of the past — literary chestnuts, archaic stories, half-forgotten recordings — are actually signs pointing toward the future.'-- A.O. Scott
Trailer
Interview with the actress Sabine Azéma
*
p.s. Hey. ** tender prey, Marc! Hi, man, it's so good to see you! Cool, I'm glad you liked the videos. I do too. I think they made very interesting decisions, and the performers are almost strangely really good. I met with one of the guys, Aaron Brown, when I was last in Los Angeles. He told me which stories they wanted to film and explained some of their ideas, and I thought their approaches and understanding the stories was really smart, so I basically just said, 'Yeah, great, do whatever you want to do'. They sent me some notes and casting decisions they'd made along the way, but I wasn't more involved than that. And, yes, the way they realized 'Oliver Twink' surprised me, and I'm really happy that the twists and turns and general architecture of the dialog, which is the main interest for me in that story, comes through and is very evident and approachable. So, yeah, them making those videos was a really good experience, and I'm pleased, honored. It is kind of like we're going to the moon aka Antarctica, ha ha. I sort of can't even imagine what that's going to be like in a exciting, scary way. How are you? What are you working on? What's up? Love, me. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. How nice that starryi's idea of beauty intersected with yours. Yeah, wishing luck is always an external thing, I guess. I sometimes feel really lucky though, I guess. But I never wish myself luck. Maybe people do that, though. ** David Ehrenstein, Ha ha, starryi gets all the credit for any Blue Plate status. I was just the transferor. Oh, David Plante. I met and talked with him a couple of times way back when. He wrote a book I remember really liking, although I can't remember the title right now. Jean Babilee R.I.P., indeed. ** MANCY, Oh, no problem. A MANCY double-feature is nothing but a boon. Man, that new one is really something. One of your most exciting videos, I think. Really beautiful. You're so good. It's humbling in the best way. Thank you so much for the alert, and just for being you. ** Tosh, Exactly, that suicidal penguin. Zac and I talk about that all the time, wondering if/hoping we might get to see one should we get hauled in front of penguin colonies down there, which I imagine we will. Completely fascinating and haunting. Thanks for the link to your Bieber piece. I'll go read it in a bit. Everyone, the very great Tosh Berman has written about the 'Justin Bieber vs. the media/social network blather phenomenon', and I can tell you right now without even having had the time to read his input yet that it's going to be sharp as a tack. Hence, join me and click. Lovely day to you, Tosh. ** Etc etc etc, Hi. Oh, yeah, the Bieber thing gets covered over here, but over here it's mostly coverage of the media's obsession with him and of Americans' weird 'ability' to reduce celebrities into characters defined only by what shows up news times about them and about what Americans' need to play judge and jury from incredibly afar might mean. Yeah, that pop celebrity phenomenon of which you speak is super interesting. Actually, I would not at all be into Gregg Araki filming my cycle books. His work and mine constantly get linked, but, apart from a couple of his very earliest films, I'm not a big fan of his stuff. What is the 'dumb academic article submission'? And I can confidently bet that, if you're writing it, it's not dumb. ** Torn porter, Man! Shit, it sucks that we didn't hook up. Long story short, I got your email but not the texts you said you sent, I don't know why, and by the time I got the email, I was running around re: work/trip prep. like the headless chicken. But you'll be here in April to June? Okay, that's better 'cos Antarctica, which is proving to be a chore to prepare for, will be history, and I should be around for at least chunks of that period. But, still, I'm sorry we didn't get to meet sooner. ** Steevee, Hi. I hear you, Steve, about wanting to post that, but, yeah, I think you would probably regret it. Facebook seems to affect people like a hysteria drug at the drop of a hat. I've been staying as far away from my news feed as possible lately. Look forward to your Denis Coté interview. I'm curious about him. Everyone, Steevee has interviewed the Canadian director Denis Coté about his much talked about film 'Vic + Flo Saw a Bear' over at the lovely Filmmaker site, and you'll glad you clicked this and muscled in on their conversation, I assure you. ** Rewritedept, Hey. Like I said, that doesn't sound uneventful, but I say that as writer whom, by my nature, doesn't have to leave my chair, much less my abode, to see what I'm doing as (hopefully) eventful. I think that's the Arctic they're saying that about, but, heck, if I'm wrong I'll let you know post-trip. May the nightmare release the hostage of your life asap. And yet you're stoked anyway. Good news. ** Aaron Mirkin, Hi. Okay, cool. Tomorrow might be best. Today’s crazy. Do you want to send me your cell #, and I can send mine back to you? My address: dcooperweb@gmail.com. Ooh, Elaine Radigue concert. I’m going to look that up straight away. Huh. Again, welcome! ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. You’re not into the effect of being deprived of the nudity of people you’re attracted to? Life must be tough for you, buddy, ha ha. Uneventfulness is the Zeus of writing. Well, sometimes it’s the Medusa of writing, I guess, but you’ve got to take your chances when you’ve got them. How is your mom doing, by the way? I’d pay good money to coerce this Allen/Farrow thing back into their private lives where it belongs as far as I'm concerned. ** Jebus, Hi. Well, that’s one way to do it, and I think it’s worth a shot, but it’s not the only way, and if you find it too difficult and inappropriate for you as a person, there are many other ways to get your work out. See how it goes. It seems like a matter of finding a persona and then using it to do the self-promoting. I imagine that a lot of the Alt Lit personalities are actually very shy folks doing acting jobs at their computer screens. Anyway, like I said, if my input would help, just ask. Take care. ** Okay. I can't believe that I haven't done an Alain Resnais Day until now since he's one of my massively favorite directors. 'Providence' is easily in my all-time top 5 films. Anyway, give the great man his due today, thanks. See you tomorrow.