La Jetée (1962)

Film: La Jetée

Director: Chris Marker

Country: Mongolia / France

Released: February 1962

Runtime: 28 minutes

Genre: Science Fiction

Studio: Argos Films

Influenced: Terry Gilliam, David Bowie, Nicholas Roeg, Patrick Keiller, Alfonso Cuarón, Claire Denis

"She had a face like the tragic mask of the theatre. A face that interested me more and more as if it concealed mysteries which it was up to me to penetrate."

Who was Chris Marker? His identity is as mysterious as his films. Like Bill Drummond of The KLF, he constructed a mythos around himself, including asserting that he was born in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. We know he began his career as a documentary filmmaker, and his early works often explored political and social issues, including the Algerian War and the Cuban Revolution. Marker experimented with non-traditional modes of filmmaking, often incorporating elements of found footage and multimedia into his work, and was an essayist and poet who collaborated with the likes of philosopher Michel Foucault and directors Agnès Varda and Alain Resnais. The latter, like Marker, was deeply concerned with themes of memory and time and Resnais' L'Année Dernière à Marienbad (1961) is a good companion piece to La Jetée, though I find the latter more compelling for its science fiction setting and experimental editing.

La Jetée's narrative centres around a post-apocalyptic Paris in which survivors live underground ("a kingdom of rats"), struggling to survive in a world ravaged by World War III. The film's protagonist, referred to only as The Man, is selected for a time travel experiment by a group of scientists and, through the use of a series of vividly detailed and haunting still images, the film follows the protagonist's journey through time as he is sent back to the past to collect information about the events leading up to the war and to find a way to prevent it from happening.

"Nothing distinguishes memories from ordinary moments. Only later do they become memorable by the scars they leave."

One reason Marker chose an English narrator for La Jetée was to appeal to an international audience, but I think his main motivation was to give the film a sense of neutrality or universality, in order to create a sense of detachment from any particular national or cultural identity. It's possible Marker may have also simply preferred the sound of an English-speaking voice for the film's narration, and found Jean Négroni's English accent best suited to his artistic vision. 

Throughout the film, the use of still images creates a sense of dreamlike stasis and melancholy, as the protagonist moves through time and space with a sense of detachment from the world around him. The film's images are often eerie and unsettling, depicting a world that is at once beautiful and deeply damaged. Marker's careful selection and sequencing of the still images serves to create a deeply affecting visual style that has been imitated by countless filmmakers in the decades since the film's release.

Another innovative aspect of La Jetée is its treatment of time travel. Unlike many other science fiction films that rely on complex visual effects and elaborate set design to create a sense of time travel, La Jetée uses a minimalist approach, relying instead on the power of the still image to convey a sense of temporal dislocation and the fragmented nature of memory. This techniques helps to create an affecting portrait of a world on the brink of destruction, and a protagonist struggling to make sense of the forces that have brought him there.

"I remember you, and I don't know who you are, nor where you come from. And I dreamt of you in a different time, in a different world, with shining armour, a hero."