La Jetée

The first time I saw this movie it was on a local educational TV channel (PBS was barely starting) in 1969. I was a youngster and it made such an indelible impression that I remembered it all these years. Luckily, to my surprise I discovered a copy recently at a video rental store.

The movie is only approximately 30 minutes in length and is composed of black and white still photography (except for one scene, where they show a mans eye blinking). It is a powerful depiction of the end of the world, human love and memory. The French narration adds to the poetic subtlety and drama. To my dismay, I heard there was a new DVD version available, but with English narration. Hopefully, the original French version will be made available, as it seems to add so much more to the dramatic effect of the movie.

To the average movie viewer, this film would be best described as avant-garde in nature. It is a prime example of how science fiction and drama can be produced with nuance and subtleties, rather than overuse of technological effects and gratuitous titillation and violence.

If you can find this rare film, you must see it. Unique in film history, this experimental short film consists of a series of still shots tied together by narration. It is the story of a post-apocalyptic Earth and time travel. Each still shot is a work of art, and the plot is compelling. A man with a strong memory of a past event witnessed as a small child (a person being shot at an airport), is periodically sent back into that pre-war period by "experimenters" with devious purposes. While visiting the past, the hero falls in love with a woman from that past.

Watch for the one and only scene that contains any movement and natural sounds (birds in the background, while the woman wakes up next to her lover). Coming in the midst of the relentless still shots, it is one of the most sublime moments in all cinema. You are doing yourself a disservice if you do not see this film.

This is one of the most stunning short films ever made. Marker has pieced together an oblique, sci-fi setting for marvelous still photography; when there is movement, it is a cause for joy! Everyone who is a cineast should see this film: it's that good and it's that important!

In 1995, Terry Gilliam made one of the finest movies in the nineties: "Twelve Monkeys". To explain how he made this awesome movie, he openly declared that he drew his inspiration from a French short film: "La Jetée". It is true that the 2 opus have similarities: both present a devastated earth caused by man's madness, survivors who take refuge in underground rooms and try to improve their grueling living conditions and especially both feature a jaded and manipulated main character.

A short film that is a reflection about time, happiness and love, entirely composed of static shots, "la jetée" is a powerful and mesmerizing work and it may appear as a cornerstone in French cinema. 42 years after its release, it kept all its strength and has not aged a bit. The quality of the editing, the photography and the commentary add to the success of Chris Marker's work.

Highly recommended and the influence of Chris Marker's short film on "Twelve Monkeys" shows well a thing: French cinema inspired a great number of American movies.

La Jettée (1962) is not only the most important work of science-fiction cinema since Fritz Lang's masterwork Metropolis (1927), but is also one of the most staggering achievements in the entire history of film. Here, filmmaker Chris Marker presents the audience with the ultimate cinematic dystopia; a futuristic, industrialised landscape of underground tunnels, colourless streets and jarring 60's architecture. The results are beautiful yet somewhat anachronistic, as the filmmaker employs a similar approach to that of Godard in Alphaville (1965) - or more recently, Winterbottom's Code 46 (2003) - albeit, with a less straightforward attitude to plot and ideology.

The basic narrative outline of the film is built around various reflective layers - similar to what Tarkovsky would use in his later film, Mirror (1975) - which allow Marker to create a certain feeling of mirroring between the notions of fact and fiction, life and death, reality and fantasy and so on. This, in turn, further develops the characters and the world of which they inhabit. The reason the film works without becoming a cold, lifeless lecture is because it anchors the images of nuclear holocaust and scientific exploration within humanistic characters and a sense of unashamed romanticism. But this is only one part of an elaborate puzzle; lest we forget that we are dealing with certain narrative paradoxes, not to mention an assortment of linear and non-linear story elements each unfolding simultaneously. Just when we think we've got the whole film worked out, our perspectives immediately change, and our ideas are lost in the blink of an eye.

However, aside from thematic visual palindromes, what is most remarkable about La Jettée - and the reason it has retained its reputation as a work of genius - is the way in which Marker manages to relate his story of travel and movement through the use of still images. By presenting these pictures to us in a sort of photo-montage - complete with brooding voice-over and various sound effects - the director somehow manages to bring the stillness of his film miraculously to life. It is, without question, a work of pure, unadulterated imagination, and a staggering testament to Marker's genius ability to convey a multitude of feelings, ideas and emotions, through a series of simple, static, though nonetheless, deeply evocative images.