So many music videos and television commercials have ripped off the imagery of Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad since its 1961 release that it makes perfect sense for someone to have created a music video consisting entirely of shots from the original film. The Asian singing voice reminds us of the affinities between Resnais’s ... read more »

La Belle Captive (1983) is an erotic noir mystery by Alain Robbe-Grillet, the screenwriter of Last Year at Marienbad. It is also quite tongue-in-cheek. The following three images which appear in succession in the film capture something of the movie’s fetishistic flavor. If the last shot reminds you of the orgy sequence in Kubrick’s Eyes ... read more »

The upcoming release of Alain Resnais’s classic Last Year at Marienbad on Blu-ray DVD reminds us that Marienbad was one of the many formally ambitious films released in the 1960s that popular critic Pauline Kael simply didn’t “get.” Blind to its visual beauties, indifferent to its innovative stylistic strategies, she dismissed Resnais’s masterwork as pretentious ... read more »

1) Because the 86-year-old French maitre is still making movies (such as Les Herbes folles, currently in post-production); and 2) Because he’s around to personally supervise the DVD transfers of his early masterpieces (such as the Region 2 version of Muriel, ou Le temps d’un retour (above, top) reviewed by Glenn Kenny here, and the ... read more »