FILM

REVIEW: La Jetee (1962) Dir. Chris Marker

CAST/CREW Directed by Chris Marker Produced by Anatole Dauman Written by Chris Marker Narrated by Jean Ngroni Starring Hlne Chatelain, Davos Hanich, Jacques Ledoux Music by Trevor Duncan Cinematography Chris Marker Editing by Jean Ravel SYNOPSIS La Jete is a 1962 French science fiction film by Chris Marker. It is also known in English as The Jetty or The Pier. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. The film runs for 28 minutes and is in black and white. It won the Prix Jean Vigo for short film. The 1995 science fiction film 12 Monkeys was inspired by, and takes several concepts directly from, La Jete. La Jete is constructed almost entirely from optically printed photographs playing out as a photomontage of varying pace. It contains only one brief shot originating on a motion- picture camera. [Wikipedia]

Fig 2 La Jetee is uncomfortable to watch; being forced to watch stills makes the viewer feel complicit in some kind of torture of prisoners. Somehow the stills make more impact than running film, as the viewer is drawn into each moment rather than watching from the outside. The twist at the end does resolve the film, but there is no real closure as the images are unforgettable. Dillon (2009), writing for the Guardian, feels that (viewers) are marked for ever by its imagery yet somehow unsure exactly what they have seen. It is a film that mines deep seams of memory, but whose surface, though hardly forgettable, remains enigmatic in retrospect.

Dillon goes on with descriptives: a complex and poetic reflection on the destructive and redemptive powers of memory stuffed relics dusty specimens, but makes little of the way in which the film is made. The stills are carefully thought out and pieced together, and the one short piece of film has so little movement, a woman blinking, that that the viewer feels voyeuristic, watching someones paralysis. BBC reviewer Jonathon Carter (2003) describes La Jetee as a rarely seen landmark of 60s cult cinema. Interestingly, he notes that director Chris Marker (who was also known as Christian Franois Bouche- Villeneuve), was the loose cannon smartarse of the French New Wave and this apocalyptic sci-fi art film was a real high point. Carter asserts that La Jetee inspired both the Terminator series and Terry Gilliams 12 Monkeys, 33 years later. Critic Dan Shneider (2008) suggests, What is so good about the film is that it shows how superfluous much of the motion in motion pictures is. Film, after all, is a medium founded and nurtured by the written word. La Jetee works because it has a strong narrative.

Shneider sums up the need for a good plot perfectly: Without a good screenplay, a film is just shadows on a wall.

REFERENCES Carter, J (2003) La Jetee Review online at the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A1120384 [accessed on 31/01/2012] Dillon, B (2009) La Jetee in The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/28/chris-marker-la-jetee-film [accessed on 31/01/2012] Shneider, D (2008) Review: La Jetee/Sans Soleil online at http://blogcritics.org/video/article/dvd-review-la-jeteesans-soleil/#ixzz1l4Jqa73e [accessed on 31/01/2012] ILLUSTRATIONS Fig 1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_jet%C3%A9e [accessed on 31/01/12] Fig 2- http://allfordeadtime.wordpress.com/tag/la-jetee/ [accessed on 31/01/12] Fig 3 http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/criterion-files-387-la-jetee.php [accessed on 31/01/12] Fig 4 http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews31/a%20la%20jetee%20sand%20solie l/a%20le%20jeteePDVD_013.jpg[accessed on 31/01/12]