La Jetée
1962 · 28m · France
Directed by Chris Marker
Genres: drama, experimental, romance, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
In a post-nuclear-war Paris, scientists experiment with time travel by sending a prisoner haunted by a childhood memory back through time, where he falls in love with a woman from the past. Told almost entirely through still photographs with narration, it is a meditation on memory, loss, and the inescapability of fate.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Photographs, one blink of motion, a man falling in love with his own death — Marker invented a form, used it once, perfected it. Untouchable.
Marker's photo-roman remains the most economically devastating use of still images in cinema, and the single moving shot of the blinking woman is among the medium's irreducible gestures. Non-negotiable.
A 28-minute photo-roman with one single live-motion shot — the woman blinking awake — is the most economical and devastating use of motion in cinema. Marker's decision to deny motion makes the moment of motion structurally seismic.
Reviews
Simply unlike any other film in the history of cinema — it harnesses still images to tell a postapocalyptic science-fiction tale of tragic heroism and lost love.
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.
Festivals
- Trieste Science Fiction Film Festival 1963
- Prix Jean Vigo 1963, Prix Jean Vigo