Film Review - La Jetée (1962)

Figure 1

The diegetric and non-diegetic sound of La Jetée are intrinsic to the film, the tone, pace and mood of it are completely set by its rhythm. It is quite often that you see the dissolve editing co-existing in time with it, "The soundtrack serves as an editing framework which shapes the mental transitions between the sequences of the story." (Ignoramous, 2018), something Jean Ravel the Editor of La Jetée has pulled off masterfully enough to have critics still talking about it. This has since been re-created many times using the film as influence, Nostalgia by Hollis Frampton in (1971) and also Poetic Justice in (1972) uses the same techniques which made the film so iconic for its use of sound and editing.

Figure 2

Brian Dillion refers to Janet Harbords study of La Jetée and remarks "La Jetée is a film about the politics of memory" (Dillon, 2009), this is something which in his later work she went on to prove as factual. Chris Marker is likely to have taken influence from Alain Resnais with whom he worked with in 1955 to produce a Holocaust documentary Night and Fog, it is eerily similar in its construction.  

Figure 3

The Narrative of La Jetée is interesting because there may be a beginning, middle and end but they are played in a reverse order for a specific purpose. The Narrative "Despite being grounded in fiction, the film is more a reflection on time, space, memory and subjectivity than it is a conventional narrative." (Huston 2012) Huston remarks, which suggests Marker is trying to say something deeper than a traditional Narrative could about the story, the main character sees himself die, right at the beginning of the film, in a sense of story this is interesting because the audience doesn't know whats just happened and how it effects the story until right at the end. The sound and editing also help to compliment the theme of memory and time also, because of the length of time between still images, they change in time with the audio, but also in some places images are quickened like in the live action scene with Helene Chatelain awakening, and im scenes where the images or held for longer like during the times when suspense or a sense of foreboding is building during the scene of Davos Hanich being put under for the first time.  

 Bibliography:

Dillon, B. (2009). Brian Dillon on the French director Chris Marker and his enigmatic masterpiece, La Jetee. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/mar/28/chris-marker-la-jetee-film [Accessed 12 Jan. 2018].

Huston, S. (2012). Revisiting and Rethinking Two Classic Essay Films: 'La Jetée' and 'Sans Soleil'. [online] PopMatters. Available at: https://www.popmatters.com/156186-la-jeteesans-soleil-the-criterion-collection-blu-ray-edition-2495870263.html [Accessed 12 Jan. 2018].

   

Ignoramous, L. (2018). La Jetee Chris Marker Analysis | Experimental Film. [online] Filmslie.com. Available at: http://filmslie.com/chris-marker-la-jetee-analysis-temporality/ [Accessed 12 Jan. 2018].

Illustrations:

Figure 1 - La Jetée (1962) [Film] - Chris Marker: Anatole Dauman   

Figure 2 - Night and Fog (1955) [Film] - Alan Resnais: Anatole Dauman  

Figure 3 - La Jetée (1962) [Film] - Chris Marker: Anatole Dauman