Friday 20 January 2017

Film Review: La Jetee

Fig.1 La Jetee Poster.


La Jetee was directed by Chris Marker in 1962.

The film In a whole is a series of still images with narration explaining what the images are representing, The film is about the aftermath of World War Three in Paris and the means to stop the tragedy by using time travel.


Patrick Samuel said: "Set in the aftermath of World War III in the bombed out city of Paris, we meet survivors who are kept underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries. This is where experiments in time travel are taking place. It’s also where we meet an un-named man – a prisoner – he’s the only one who can withstand the effects of the experiments. He’s desperate to solve the puzzle of the image that haunts him; when he witnessed the death of a man, and the woman who watched it with him. Her face remains burned in his memory." (Samuel,2013)


Fig.2 Film Still.



A group of scientist start to experiment with time travel by fining humans who will be able to withstand the shock of time travel, after many failed attempts the scientists turn to  prisoner who seems to be capable of withstanding time travel, he is sent to his pre-war past where he would of been a child and meets a women who he soon develops feelings for and forms a relationship with her, he is then sent to the future to gather help on stopping the war, the future kind give him a devise to stop the war. Once the war has been stopped the man is told he is able to stay with the future kind, he instead requests to be sent back to the pre-war times to join the women he had fallen in love with.



Fig.3 Woman from the past.


After he is sent back he finds the women but realizes she has been killed by one of the scientist agents, the agent then turns and kills him, destroying any association with the parallel world and the means of time travel.


"This classic 'photo-roman' about the power of memory - 'the story of a man marked by an image of his childhood' - begins at Orly airport a few years before WWIII. That image is of a woman's face at the end of the pier; and in the post-apocalyptic world the man now inhabits as a prisoner, he is given the chance to discover its true significance as a guinea-pig in a time travel experiment. Marker uses monochrome images recognisably from the past, such as the ruins of Europe after WWII, and with a few small props and effects, subtly suggests a future environment. The soundtrack's texture is similarly sparse, and the fluid montage leads the viewer into the sensation of watching moving images. Until, that is, an extraordinary epiphany when an image genuinely does move: the man's sleeping lover opens her eyes." DT




Bibliography:

Patrick Samuel January 3rd, 2013, http://staticmass.net/world/la-jetee-1962-review/

DT (There where no dates stated on the webpage) :http://www.timeout.com/london/film/la-jetee

1 comment:

  1. Hi Sam - you appear to be out-sourcing your brain to the ideas of these other people! You've been around the likes of myself, Jackie and Kath Abiker to know that these reviews are about your ideas - and you use supporting evidence to lend credibility to your observations. Here, you're just retelling the story and leaving everything else up to your sources... I know this film is 'odd', but I'm sure you must have had some ideas about the relationship of the use of photos to the idea of human memory etc? These reviews are about your ideas and your responses, as well as practising your writing. I want you to look again at this 'style guide' to academic writing too because it will help you join things up a bit more, as this review is very fragmented. I'm really pleased to see you writing more and in a timely way, but I want you to think about the content and the style too:

    http://ucarochester-cgartsandanimation.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/fao-caa-yr-1-invisible-cities-2016_17.html

    And you need to look again at how you reference the illustrations you're using etc:

    http://www.uca.ac.uk/library/academic-support/harvard-referencing/

    You've got to get this basic stuff under your belt, Sam! You need it and you need to know how to do it - and why you need to do it :)

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