La Jetée (1962)
Genre: Scifi
Duration: 28 minuten
Alternative titles: The Pier / De Loopbrug
Country:
France
Directed by: Chris Marker
Stars: Davos Hanich, Hélène Chatelain and Jean Négroni
IMDb score:
8,2 (40.376)
Releasedate: 16 February 1962
La Jetée plot
"A man’s obsession with an image of his past."
Paris, sometime after World War III. After a nuclear battle, humanity lives underground, sheltering from the deadly radiation on the Earth's surface. Scientists are conducting experiments with time travel, hoping that the future or the past can save the desperate present. Prisoners are their guinea pigs. Most succumb to the shock of the jump in time, but one of them proves particularly successful. This is due to his strong attachment to a memory from his early childhood: at an airport he noticed a beautiful girl, and then saw a man die.
Actors and actresses
Narrator (voice)
The Woman
The Man
The Experimenter
A woman from the future
Reviews & comments
Fisico
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- 10039 messages
- 5398 votes
Special film that looks like a kind of comic book. A film that consists of photos, but at the same time is very fluid. Very strong and extremely beautiful atmospheric setting, also due to the raw, characterful voice-over.
The theme also offers perspectives with time travel. A film that was ahead of its time and was therefore also inspiring for other films. It certainly didn't have to take longer than half an hour. Short and sweet to keep the momentum optimal.
Translated from Dutch · View original
mjk87 (moderator films)
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- 15020 messages
- 4754 votes
A nice idea and fun to see. The film certainly should not have been longer (and secretly lasted just a little too long to really remain interesting). The photography itself is nicely shot in beautiful black and white, but not necessarily very special. It's nice how fast editing and shots blending together sometimes give an idea of movement, especially in that scene in bed (where the only really moving moment is, the blinking of eyes[ /spoiler]). The story itself is fascinating, but in a real film, the Twelve Monkeys based on it, much more was done with it on every level, including thematically. 3.0*.
Translated from Dutch · View original
Roger Thornhill
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- 6280 messages
- 2591 votes
Fortunately, apart from an overacting Brad Pitt, I have barely any memories left of 12 Monkeys, so I don't have to concern myself with a comparison, but in any case, that might not have mattered much anyway, because La jetée stands perfectly well on its own. Carefully constructed with striking photos and interesting faces, a beautiful plot, an oppressive soundtrack (that whispering of the German scientists!), and a strong ending. (In 1962 this was undoubtedly still fresh, but nowadays the premise of a time traveler accidentally running into his past self is almost a cliché.) And when seen from the side, the woman sometimes reminded me of Monica Vitti. Yes, even though we are used to quite a lot these days in terms of imaginative sci-fi, this film still captivated me throughout (and personally, I wouldn't have minded if it had been a bit longer – only those people from the future seemed a bit forced.
It is funny how something like that works: one second of film usually consists of 24 frames that our brains then stitch together until they form a single movement and we no longer perceive the gaps between the frames, but when I see the process with the photos in this film (or when I read an old-fashioned comic), I also turn it into a continuous story in my head, albeit of course in a different way than the deception of my brain when I watch a film.
Incidentally, Wikipedia mentions that moving images appear in the film not once, but twice: we see the woman blink her eyes, but just before that, she also opens her mouth slightly. Or is that merely an optical illusion caused by the smooth transition from one photo to the other? In any case, one or two minimal moving fragments are completely unimportant to me – there could just as easily have been none.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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