Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

I kid you not, dear readers-six, that I have been waiting to watch this film for two and a half years! It was recommended to me that long ago, and it sat on our Netflix queue’s ‘unknown availability’ list for two and a half years.  Also on our unknown availability list is Klaus Kinski’s Nosferatu the Vampyre so we’ll have to wait and see how long that one takes (it’s already been on there probably a year at least). Hopefully that one will be worth the wait….

Back to the main event. So Last Year at Marienbad was recommended to me because it was supposed to be relevant to my studies of Muriel Spark’s novel, The Public Image (1968). Now, I’m not going to get into much detail about that but I would like to point out that waiting two and a half years to watch something (that was made in 1961) is a long time, and when the climactic moment arrives when the film shows up at my doorstep (albeit WAY late to include in my analysis of the novel…two and a half years ago….), it is reasonable to think that the film would be relevant. But it’s not. It’s not relevant in terms of direct narrative comparison, only tangentially based on certain theoretical principals…which may work for some people).  I’ve read and studied Muriel Spark’s The Public Image a lot.  I should know. Though I do not claim to be a Spark scholar or anything.

Last Year at Marienbad is a film about memory and perception of reality. It has elements of the postmodern because of its repetition and the way the repetition discombobulates the viewer’s understanding of the broken narrative. The Public Image has elements of the postmodern because of its exploitation of Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and because of Spark’s use of Baudrillard’s/Plato’s simulacrum. Now, I suppose, on a purely theoretical level, we could make the very long stretch that Last Year at Marienbad is capitalizing on the concept of the simulacrum in that memories are themselves simulacra of real events. This, I can buy. In that way, the two films are tangentially related. But in Last Year at Marienbad, the memories of the main characters are inexact and fluctuating; they are not exact copies.

One thing I’d like to point out is that as I was watching this film, I thought of Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, The Shining (1980). The big hotel with all of the bourgeois guests, and the feeling that perhaps people are stuck in memories, or insanity, is something I felt was ever present in Last Year at Marienbad. At the very least, I assume Kubrick probably saw this film. There was also an ever-present theme of inadequate communication (because of the way the viewer was treated to only parts of conversations, picking up only random portions of what the other hotel guests were saying as if you were walking through the rooms too quickly to hear more than a sentence or two) and I couldn’t help but think of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks series, especially with the White/Black Lodge sequences of bizarro communication. I will, however, admit that this idea of inadequate communication was part of my analysis of Spark’s novel, via Fellini’s La dolce vita, in terms of Marcello’s difficulties communicating with Paola in the end.  But I still stand true to my original assessment that this film would not be a text of primary comparison with the novel.

Aside from my general disappointment that this film was not, in fact, related directly to my prior studies, I found it to be one of the most cinematographically spectacular films I’ve seen in a long time. The framing of the shots was magnificent because of the interior and exterior architecture and design of the setting. For instance, one of the most visually appealing shots was out on the grounds, with shadows and shapes abounding, looking much like a painting (see this shot on The Criterion Collection’s page for the film) with its balance, and yet almost surreal structure. Also, one scene, when the man and woman are walking through the hallway, is framed perfectly with not only the design in the carpet but also with the walls and the corridor/hallway itself.

This is not a film to be watched when tired. It is slow, repetitive, and unresolved in the end. Perhaps this is another tangential correlation to Spark’s The Public Image, as the novel also ends ambiguously. But Last Year at Marienbad begins ambiguously, ends ambiguously, and everything in between is ambiguous because of the uncertainty of memory. I suppose the serious message we might be getting from Alain Resnais in this film is that memories, even if they are only 1 year old, can be treacherous and dependent on our perception of reality at the time of the making of the memory and at the time of our retrieving of the memory. That the man can’t recall if he raped the woman is disturbing. That the woman can’t recall the man at all is disturbing. That the viewer is left unsure of any of it is disturbing. Resnais is definitely wanting his viewers to think, and this is good.

Tenth Victim (1965)

A.k.a. La decima vittima in Italian.  Directed by Elio Petri. To my knowledge, I’ve never seen any other films by Petri.  I’m not sure I’ll be running to the video store (or the Netflix queue) to try and find others, to be honest.

This film, on the surface, is about society’s acceptance  and perpetuation of violence.  The plot centers around legalized hunting of humans, a.k.a. The Big Hunt, where hunters and victims battle it out, and if a hunter makes it to the 10th victim, he/she wins $1m.  So, the people running around in broad daylight, in crowds of people, shooting at each other is a socially-acceptable and government-sanctioned thing to do.  There are licenses and permits and bounties to collect if you’re the victor on any hunt.  There’s a great degree of obviousness to this storyline.  No extra brains required.

This film, though clearly about violence, is also about fear of marriage.  And more than just fear of marriage, it’s about getting married despite your fears.  The viewer can clearly see a romance building throughout the film, but isn’t necessarily expecting a Jane Austen-esque marriage plot to unfold by the end. Nevertheless, that’s what happens, and Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) gets “tricked” into marrying his hunter after a series of bizarre twists with their hunt. 

I suppose you can be a victim of violence, or of marriage. 

Set in some sort of futuristic, bizzarro world that looks exactly like regular 1965 Rome but with the addition of interesting looking  (and supposedly futuristic) clothes, this film doesn’t quite scream “fantastic” at you.  And I’m pretty sure the themesong was borrowed from Mastroianni’s earlier film, Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960), which is unfortunate.  The ole coat tails thing….

I suppose Mastroianni was cast in this for his star-appeal.  But it’s a big let down based on the other films I’ve seen him in. 

I’d say Petri tried too hard.  It wasn’t a horrible film, but it wasn’t great either.  I usually don’t write about films that don’t speak to me in some way, but I might as well for this one.

Il bidone (1955)

This film’s English title is The Swindle.  It’s directed by Federico Fellini.  By now, I’ve seen about 85 % of Fellini’s films.  Slowly but surely I’ve been accomplishing that goal over the years.

What I like about Fellini is how he presents (and therefore essentially critiques) society and our various approaches to life.  A consistent presentation of such in his films is that of the Catholic church.  While the film does not depict real clergymen, Fellini has his three (and then later four) swindlers pose as clergymen in order to swindle poor rural folks out of their hard-earned money.  I don’t think he intended to present the rural people necessarily as stupid and gullible, but rather the swindlers as taking advantage of the power that the clergy holds over people.  And the clergy-swindle (involving paying for masses in exchange for a box of treasure) occurs in the film multiple times with two sets of swindlers, while the other swindles only happen once (besides the sequence with the gas station incidents, which happen back-to-back).

Another thing I like about Fellini films, in general, is that Fellini gives you an inside look at a particular person (or group of people): their happiness, their sadness, their humiliation, their downfall, etc. 

By the end of the film, however, the viewer is left wondering what the point of all of it was because Augusto certainly doesn’t learn anything from his experiences. Not that the viewer is necessarily expecting the film to express a moral.  But perhaps the point of this film was to point out that Augusto’s life went nowhere:  always had and always would have.    One can only surmise that his eventual downfall was a result of reconnecting with his daughter and promising to help her with money.  And, in the end, it was money that was Augusto’s downfall and no one could HEAR him when he cried for help. 

The ability to hear and effectively communicate is a theme that I’ve studied in Fellini’s La dolce vita.  I won’t go into the gorey details (you can read my M.A. Essay if you want…..)  but suffice it to say that a character’s inability to effectively communicate or hear appears to be something Fellini does intentionally in order to convey his vision about human interactions and understanding.  It’s a beautiful theme to notice in his films and certainly makes them more memorable in terms of Fellini’s craft. 

Augusto didn’t learn anything in the end (because he got himself into a life-threatening situation as a result of his pursuit of money), and he was hurt and crying out for help and no one could hear him.  And that’s what’s so great about Fellini and his films.  Some of his characters learn something about “moving on” and “making a better life” by the end (Cabiria  in Le notti di Cabiria ) and others don’t (Marcello in La dolce vita).  I say this because some people in the real world want to learn from their experiences and not make the same mistakes again.  However, in Marcello’s defense, I think he does learn something:  he perhaps learns how to live in his world of glamour magazines and orgy parties a lot better, rather than running away into the saner world that the little girl Paola represents. 

I think Fellini’s various film worlds and characters represent a reasonable reflection on the real world because some people learn from their mistakes and others do not.  Some people want to better their lives, others do not.  Some people want to be productive members of society and have respectable jobs, others do not.  And that’s okay.  It takes a lot of people to make such a diverse world.  Life would be infinitely boring if we were all bankers and aristocrats and little girls working at seaside restaurants.  We need swindlers, whores, and leaches like gossip columnists and Paparazzo to keep the world from becoming a homogeneous bore.  It’s those people that Fellini makes films about, and I like it.

The last thing I’ll say about this film is that the sound was a little annoying in places.  And, by that, I mean that there was an overwhelming racket, especially during the party scene, that either was a fault or something intentional in order to discombobulate.  The viewer expects some loudness but it was truly overwhelming.  My suspicion is that whoever prepared/remastered the DVD didn’t pay attention to sound levels.

Umberto D (1952)

I’ve seen a few De Sica films, including The Bicycle Thief and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis–both in Italian film classes I had as an undergraduate.  I love Italian film.  I love Italian Neorealist film because it deals with (and usually stars) regular/real people in real-life situations.  It is for this same reason that I like the fiction of Muriel Spark–regular people, regular problems. 

In Umberto D, De Sica presents the viewer with a hard-hitting view of life as a retiree in postwar Italy–well, that’s obvious, I suppose.  Umberto was probably in his 70s and he was way past his prime in terms of being able to find employment.  Today, we frequently see retirees working in our communities, filling in the gaps left by their meager Social Security checks.  But, in postwar Italy, they weren’t as “fortunate” as we are today, or we will be in the future. 

What was VERY surprising to me about this film was the way it ended.  Umberto tries desperately to give the love of his life, his dog Flike, to someone who will take care of it.  This is all so that he can feel comfortable, I suppose, in ending his life.  But at every twist and turn, Umberto is unable to give Flike away, or even abandon him to Chance.  It turns out that his love for Flike is a good enough reason to keep on living.

This ending reminds me a lot of the ending of another Italian film, Nights of Cabiria (1957) by Federico Fellini.  Cabiria encounters many hardships before the narrative begins (she is a prostitute so one can imagine the hard life she leads), and certainly throughout the film.  At the end, when the viewer thinks Cabiria isn’t going to be able to go on, we see her emerge from a dark wood (n.b. Dante’s dark wood of error), re-enter the world (the crowd of young people walking down the road singing and playing music), and smile with (possibly) a renewed appreciation for life.  What will happen to Cabiria after that?  Will she go back to prostituting herself, will she ever trust men again, will she do something else?  Fellini is quoted as saying (I believe it is in either Ketcham’s or Bondanella’s text) that he deliberately leaves his film endings open for interpretation because he wants to viewer to make the ultimate decision.  So rather than ending ambiguously, the film ends possibilistically.  Ultimately, the film is for us, the viewers.  It’s a medium for us to absorb and process in our own individual ways.  I don’t know if Cabiria will go back to prostituting, but I know she’ll be happy.  That’s what I get from the film.  She’ll appreciate life.  But this is surprising for the viewer in a way because after all she’s been through, it doesn’t seem like she has much to live for. 

Umberto D also ends in an unexpected way, at least as far as I’m concerned.  The viewer is expecting Umberto to find a place to commit suicide, and he does–an oncoming train.  But a peripetetic moment comes when he’s literally on the threshold of his demise, holding Flike, and when the train comes rushing by, Flike escapes from Umberto’s hands–because HE’S not ready to die.  Then we see a change in Flike–the normally very obedient and affectionate Jack Russell terrier doesn’t want to have anything to do with Umberto because Umberto has not only tried to take his own life, but to take Flike with him.  It takes Umberto a little while to coax Flike back, to get Flike to trust him again.  And the film ends with them friends again, walking away into the park happy and playing together.

This is unexpected because the trajectory of the film is such that the viewer is expecting Umberto to kill himself–he seemingly has nothing to live for: he’s old, he has no money, he has no place to live, he’s treated as an outcast. He’s at the bottom of the food chain and there’s little hope for him in society.  But he defies expectations.  Umberto gives us hope at the end that life isn’t so bad.  Cabiria does the same thing–if she can live through it and be happy, what can we accomplish with our own happiness?  But, alas, it isn’t that easy in the real world, right?  Perhaps only in a neo-realist world can disaster end in a smile.

Umberto D also shines an interesting light on the way we treat the elderly.  Pensions and Social Security just aren’t enough.  We should be doing whatever we can to show our elder citizens (including our own parents and grandparents) the dignity they deserve as they get older and are unable to support themselves.  The maid, Maria, is a great example of a compassionate soul who legitimately cares about the well-being of Umberto–perhaps because she inherently knows about hardship because of her unexpected pregnancy out of wedlock, and the future struggles she will endure as a result.  Maria and Umberto are both in sticky situations–one is too old to work but still very capable of taking care of himself, the other is at a ripe age for working but she has gotten herself into a mess and will soon be fired when the Landlady finds out about her pregnancy.  They both need help: the young and the old.  They both get treated poorly by the landlady, Umberto is overlooked by his former colleagues, and Maria is overlooked by her two lovers.  The viewer doesn’t know what will happen with Maria or Umberto but they will make it because they both show resilience throughout the film, and that is the best indicator of what is to come when you can’t read the future of a finished film.

I suppose what I’ve ultimately taken away from this film is that life itself is the silver lining to the problem of life itself.