Film Night: Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

The original plan for finding a decent time to compose regular blog posts was worryingly short lived, so i've set myself a challange now. A set time at least once a week to upload a decent post, with an optional one throughout the week: i've set my mind on working on writing a the constant posts on thursday night after my class to post up on friday morning, and then the optional one i'll just say as a Tuesday or Wednesday night. I know it must sound whiny me trying to convince myself on my own blog to post. I have to admit there is still a little bit of apprehension in regards to writing. I still expect people to get bored and not want to listen to the dork anymore. Nevertheless I want to turn it into an interesting read and so it's just something i'll have to push through, and be more attentive to. You may begin your wait with bated breath....

Before I begin: DEFINITE ABSOLUTE UNMISSABLE RECOMMENDATION FOR THIS FILM!!!!

Anyway to the main point of this post, I wanted to do a write up of a film I watched a couple of nights. A real extraordinary must-watch of the New Wave film-making. There was something utterly captivating about the entire thing. I'll warn early on though: for any film lovers who rely on every element of the plot carefully explained for them to enjoy the experience, you'll probably need to appropriate a very new mindset for this. In this case, the entire film exists around the viewer and their imagination.

The story is set at a Baroque Hotel (amazing filming locations: Amalienburg, Nymphenburg and Schleissheim), where a man approaches a woman, claiming to have met her the previous year and arranged to for their meetup to happen on that exact day at the hotel. She (played by the incredible late Delphine Seyrig) holds no recollection of such a meeting, yet despite her protests, they become further and further entwined as the film progresses. What is most interesting though is that half the film you're not sure if their passionate scenes are happening in their present time, a year beforehand when they supposedly met, or in the man's imagination

Vanity Fair listed it in one of The 25 Most Fashionable Films in Hollywood, and with very good reason. From the opening scene each character is utterly immaculate, and you want to imagine Coco Chanel (who was in charge of all the dream-like costumes) behind the camera working her magic, turning every woman into a fiece statuesque beauty, blackened and glimmering in pearls and diamonds, with each tuxedoed gentleman around them taking second focus. The only way I can think to explain it is a haute couturiers wet dream.

In short, for me anyway, I found it an abolutely exquisite immaculately detailed visual film, the plot and character development are left a little bit more behind but that's rather the beauty of it, you're left to imagine how you want their story to go. Definitely a beautiful one for all the dreamers out there...

#movietime