Last Year at Marienbad 4K 1961 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

French Hotel. The young man tries to convince the girl that they had already met in the garden of Fredericksburg last year. But the girl does not remember the man and does not know whether the meeting was in Fredericksburg or Marienbad. The young man describes the moment of their meeting. He tells that she almost gave herself to him, but changed her mind at the last minute. They then agreed to meet here a year later to test their feelings.

Review 4K Movie

Suddenly, this winter, my ideals about the representations of reference cinema collapsed. A notion that often saved me from the desire to finally “give myself over” to a movie that happened to come my way, to plunge into its world, to become intimate with nature. It served as a kind of barrier that kept my objective view, restraint and sobriety intact. Suddenly, however, this winter, the barrier was broken under the onslaught of the painting “Last Year at Marienbad.”

Before this incident, I thought that the movies, surprise me no longer able to surprise me. It seemed to me that I had already defined for myself the meaning of the word “masterpiece”, knew where to apply it. But something was still missing, I just couldn't figure out what it was. I felt the unbridledness of my own needs, the dissatisfaction of my accumulated feelings, lurking somewhere deep and waiting for something that would finally bring them down. And suddenly everything changed. Before I became acquainted with this picture, it seemed to me that any cinematic work is confined, has limits, spatial constraints. In movies where a love story is positioned, the frame is love itself. In movies that are political - politics, religious - religion. But here there is complete freedom, an impartial “stream of consciousness”, unencumbered by any plotlines that would help the viewer to concentrate on a particular angle of the narrative.

The freedom of narrative is created by the absence of plot. Speaking boldly about the lack of plot, I can operate on the authors' words as proof: “Brief summaries of the movie sound silly. This is a movie that is all based on appearances. Everything in it is ambiguous. Not a single scene can be told with precision where it takes place, not a single thought - to which character it belongs”. Try now to imagine who is there offering the past to whom, imposing memories. A fact of no small importance is when the writers of the movie were asked “Have the characters met in the past?” to which one of them answered “yes” and the other “no”.

The movie “Last Year in Marienbad” is unique in its form, its outer shell. It is difficult to find something completely innovative in such a limited art as cinema. And form develops cinematography, increasing its scope. Here is an example of a completely new form, despite the sophistication of surrealism. A shell, streamlined by the intertwining of circumstances strung together. A mathematical formula with no end. It creates a hitherto unknown performance, breaking all established laws of filmmaking.

The movie, first and foremost, wants to be perceived as the aforementioned mathematical formula. Nothing can prevent us from doing so, and even contribute to this perception, for example, the “game of matches”, which finds its application not only at the playing table, but also in the narrative itself, in the relationships between the characters. Also naming characters with symbols - A, X, M, instead of the usual names. It can be the first letters of their real names, but it reminds more of formulas, drawn by the teacher with chalk on the blackboard in high schools, without the deduced answer, over which students puzzle. Or a teacher's problem in junior high school: 'If object 'a' moves closer to object 'b' in a certain amount of time'. But all mathematical problems have inherent answers, and this movie example is not one of them.

It is difficult to resist inclining the movie to some favorable side, forgetting that this movie is not interpretable, and by this inclination we commit an act of desecration of the authors' idea. Sometimes it seems that the plot of the movie is a lost truth, clutched in the grip of forgotten memories. Sometimes a love triangle is imposed, a seduction with a fatal outcome. Other times it is an imaginary action, reminiscent of “theater of the absurd”, inspired by the characters of the theater itself, often glimpsed in the frame. But everything in the movie is questioned. Reality, among other things - which elevates the movie to unattainable heights. The authors allow us to doubt even the title of the movie. When? - Last year? Where? In Marienbad? Maybe Carlsbad? And finally, the legitimate question - what? Is it love? The result is nothing but questions and no answers. Unless the only given, which with relief, we can accept unanimously - the movie is a true masterpiece, an associative, exemplary and exemplary “absolute” movie, possessing a refined style.

There are not enough words, not nearly enough flattering epithets and all sorts of high-minded definitions to be able to pack the greatness of the picture into one discreet review. The movie is able to inspire, to push to co-creation. The movie is perhaps the most successful example of what the camera can squeeze out of itself since its inception. “Last Year at Marienbad” is true art, giving food to the imagination. Actually, to put it in the words of Orson Welles about the true purpose of filmmaking. The film, as well as the director, is a rallying point for the French “new wave”, becoming, most likely, its most prominent representative, in spite of the cardboard and sponge-like F. Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard's *broken montage*, with its constant stylization of its own.

Implying all the chaos of the narrative, I would like to remember to mention the harmony, both external and internal. The exquisite beauty of Delphine Seyrig. And the characters seem to merge with the architecture of the building, with a string of doors, carpets, sculptures, turning into a set, like a single frame in which the image of Delphine Seyrig by means of a technical effect seems to “connect” with the wall. At the end of the movie, closing my eyes in the sweet excitement of what I had seen, I had a fantasy where I happened to be in the labyrinth of rooms of that castle. I'm running, maybe from myself, maybe from the images of the movie that haunt me, running and I don't know what lies ahead. To live my life like this, in oblivion. To take my own life, leaving only my own picture in my memory, in the hope that someone will discover it years later, as I discovered this movie.

This is a picture of the kind that is born not after the editing is finished or in the final writing of the script, but in the process of the viewer's subsequent encounter with the movie. The opinions that arise after watching the movie are the most important, they are what define the movie, prolonging its life. And the movie is a real treasure trove, a gold mine for the most diverse interpretations. Someone will want to interpret it in a dreamlike way, someone in an imaginary way - it doesn't matter, because there are no correct formulations. And in order not to repeat myself by descending to mere paraphrasing, I am withdrawing. And anyway, is it possible to have a pen, when the hand trembles with excitement, the heart flutters, as if after the first date, and thoughts are rambling in my head in a chaotic order.

Suddenly, Last Year at Marienbad became my favorite movie this winter. The images seemed to descend from the screen, and I, awakened from a long sleep, took them joyfully, realizing that cinema sometimes gives an unknown feeling, bubbling after somewhere inside, which is difficult to analyze, to put into words. However, only those who truly love movies take this feeling as a gift. And I, as if I had fallen in love all over again, can say that “Last Year in Marienbad” showed me that there are methods that, by becoming symbols, make it possible to establish a link between creativity and reality.