Film Appreciation with K S Sivakumaran :
French director Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais
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This week we shall see how I appreciated some of the films of one of
the great masters of the international cinema. He is a Frenchman and his
name Alain Resnais. When the European Cinema was flourishing with the
advent of the French “New Wave” in the late 1950s, this film maker and
film critic too came into prominence Black and White pictures were the
order of the day and films in colour were a rare phenomenon.
Among Resnais films a few were noteworthy: Hiroshima, My Love and
Last Year at Marienbad. These two films I had seen in the 16 mm version
some 50 years ago at the screenings at Lionel Wendt theatre- courtesy
the Colombo Film Society. However two years ago I saw a few more films
of his in a Retrospective at the Kerala International Film Festival.
The purpose of this piece is to inform the younger generation that
may have not heard of either Alain Resnais or his films. We as young
readers were aware of his films and films by other great directors
through our reading of high quality journals like the Sight and Sound
and Film and Filming, just to mention a few journals.
Since most of our readers might not have seen these films for them to
judge whether my appreciation of such films could be of any interest to
them, I shall briefly tell the storyline of only one of the films this
week so that if they happen to see this film at some point or the other
they may have their own interpretation.
Let’s begin with Last Year at Marienbad. As some of our well read
readers would know Alain-Robbe-Grillet is a famous writer in French. It
was he who wrote the screenplay for this film Nevertheless the film was
not easily understood by many at that time. It was a puzzle. And
intriguing.
In a place called Marienbad a man had an affair with a woman in the
previous year and was trying to woo her again. But the strange thing is
that she does not remember him nor the affair or it maybe that she
pretends to not knowing about the affair. The man tries to convince
their affair, but she doesn’t respond. She had a lover already and told
him then that she could not go with him, but promised to be with him in
the following year. Such affairs as our conservative readers would say
are unethical or immoral. But in the western society such escapades are
quite common.
The heroine is then shown at a different time at a different place.
This makes the audience bewildered. And so is the hero. He is not sure
whether he had an affair with that woman at all in the previous year.
Was it a fantasy or mixing up of time or an experimentation of the new
wave trend?” I wouldn’t know then, but eminent film critics have “read”
the film differently.
Perhaps you too would. I enjoyed the film as an adolescent for the
so-called love affair.
sivakumaran.ks@ gmail.com |