With: Delphine Seyrig (A), Giorgio Albertazzi (X), Saha Pitoëff (M)
Director: Alain Resnais
Producers: Pierre Courau, Raymond Froment
Production co: Terra Film, Société Nouvele des Films Cormoran, Precitel, Como-Film, Argos-Films, Les Films Tamara, Cinétel, Silver Films, Cineriz
Screenplay:  Alain Robbe-Grillet
Photography: Sacha Vierny
Editors: Jasmine Chasney, Henri Colpi
Music: Francis Seyrig
REVIEWS

“Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais’ epochal Last Year at Marienbad has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. Written by radical master of the New Novel Alain Robbe-Grillet, this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in telling its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-filled château they now find themselves wandering.  Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings, diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais’ investigation into the nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story.”

— Criterion 

“Oscillates ambiguously between past, present, and various conditional tenses, mixing memory and fantasy, fear and desire. The overall tone is poker-faced parody of lush Hollywood melodrama, yet the film’s dreamlike cadences, frozen tableaux, and distilled surrealist poetry are too eerie, too terrifying even, to be shaken off as camp.”

— Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Auckland   
Monday, 8 July, 6:30pm*

Wellington  
Monday, 15 July, 6:15pm*
​
Canterbury 
Monday, 23 September, 7:30pm

Dunedin  
Wednesday, 9 October, 7:30pm

Whanganui    
Monday, 21 October, 7:00pm

Timaru    
Monday, 4 November, 7:00pm

*Denotes DCP screening
CLASSIC CINEMA selection >>