Mindscapes: The Films of Alain Resnais
"Probably the greatest living French filmmaker.”—Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
From November 7 and through December 2, the Gene Siskel Film Center presents Mindscapes: The Films of Alain Resnais, a series of eight programs of films directed by Alain Resnais, the 87-year-old master whose early classics served as groundbreakers in the development of modernist cinema, and whose most recent film WILD GRASS played to great acclaim at last May's Cannes Film Festival.
Born in 1922, the son of a pharmacist, Resnais first made his mark with a series of acclaimed documentary shorts, including the classic Holocaust remembrance NIGHT AND FOG (1955). His first two features, HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959) and LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961), were among the most celebrated works of the French New Wave, although Resnais's elegant and controlled style set his films apart from the rough-edged spontaneity of such contemporaneous Nouvelle Vague landmarks as Godard's BREATHLESS and Truffaut’s SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER. Also, in contrast to the New Wave ideal of the writing-directing auteur, Resnais has relied heavily on the contributions of screenwriters with strong literary identities, including Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Stephen Sondheim, Jules Feiffer, and Alan Ayckbourn.
This assortment of collaborators has given Resnais’s career a remarkable variety, but its diversity is unified by his overriding concern with mental and subjective dimensions. Andrew Sarris has called him “the cinema’s most profound mediator on the human mind.” Resnais's fragmentary and associative handling of time and memory has been hugely influential, not only on specific directors such as John Boorman (POINT BLANK), Nicolas Roeg (WALKABOUT), Richard Lester (PETULIA), Steven Soderbergh (THE LIMEY, SOLARIS), and Michel Gondry (ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND), but also, in modulated forms, on the general vocabulary of mainstream filmmaking.
Resnais’s early features caused him to be inaccurately pigeonholed by some critics (notably, Pauline Kael and David Thomson) as ponderous and cerebral. Rather than being ponderous, Resnais’s films are often witty and playful in their juggling of narrative schemes and their flouting of realistic conventions. Rather than being cerebral, they are poignant and haunting in their sensitivity to the slipperiness of time and the inescapability of the past. They are also ravishingly beautiful, characterized by a distinctively elegant and fluid style—dazzlingly intricate in Resnais’s early films, increasingly subtle and precise in his later work.
For their assistance in presenting this series, the Gene Siskel Film Center thanks Delphine Selles, Diane Eberhardt, and Elodie Sobchak of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.
— Martin Rubin
Saturday double-bill discount!
Buy a ticket at our regular prices for the 3:00 Resnais film on any Saturday in November, and get a ticket for the second Resnais film that day at this discount rate (tickets must be purchased at the same time): General Admission $7; Students $5; Members $4. (This discount rate applies to the second film only.)
Four Shorts by Resnais
1950-58, Alain Resnais, France, ca. 96 min. total
GUERNICA (1950, 12 min.), co-directed by Robert Hessens, expands the iconic painting with other Picasso works and a lyrical narration written by poet Paul Éluard. LES STATUES MEURENT AUSSI (STATUES ALSO DIE, 1953, 30 min.), co-directed by Chris Marker, is a provocative examination of the evisceration of African art when it is transplanted to Paris. TOUTE LA MÉMOIRE DU MONDE (ALL THE WORLD'S MEMORY, 1956, 22 min.) is a fascinating voyage through the knowledge-laden labyrinth of the Bibliothèque Nationale. NIGHT AND FOG (NUIT ET BROUILLARD, 1955, 32 min.) is a celebrated confrontation of Auschwitz, historical amnesia, and the unrepresentable. In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
- November 7th—5:15pm
- November 12th—8:15pm
JE T'AIME, JE T'AIME
1968, Alain Resnais, France, 91 min.
With Claude Rich, Olga Georges-Picot
"Is there a more tender and affecting work about the irretrievable than JE T’AIME, JE T’AIME?"—James Quandt, Cinematheque Ontario
Perhaps Resnais's most underrated film, and one of the most difficult to see, JE T'AIME, JE T'AIME compares fascinatingly with Chris Marker's LA JETÉE as an art-cinema science-fiction film that folds in on itself. A suicidal writer (Rich) volunteers for a high-risk time-travel experiment that will enable him to relive a single minute that occurred exactly one year ago, but, when the apparatus malfunctions, he is sent tumbling through the labyrinth of his memories. This melancholy, haunting story is the occasion for some of Resnais's most dazzling displays of time-twisting editing. In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
- November 21st—3:00pm
- November 23rd—6:00pm
LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD
(L'ANNÉE DERNIÈRE À MARIENBAD)
1961, Alain Resnais, France, 1961, 94 min.
With Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi
Both a cause célèbre and a bête noire of art-house cinema, MARIENBAD has survived parody, controversy, and endless interpretation to stand as one of the great tours de force of film history. Amid the mirrored corridors and manicured gardens of a European chateau, a nameless man (Albertazzi) encounters a woman (the stunning Seyrig) who denies his claim that they had an affair the previous year. Around this question mark, Resnais and screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet construct a dazzling maze of permutations, prestidigitations, and possibilities. In French with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (MR)
- November 14th—3:00pm
- November 19th—8:15pm
MON ONCLE D’AMÉRIQUE
1980, Alain Resnais, France, 125 min.
With Gerard Dépardieu, Nicole Garcia
"It may be the funniest film on the horror of working since Charles Chaplin’s MODERN TIMES.”—Andrew Sarris, Village Voice
Like many of Resnais's films, MON ONCLE D’AMÉRIQUE centers on the mental landscape, but the approach here is more scientific than subjective. Three story lines—concerning a desperate businessman (Gerard Dépardieu), an aspiring actress (Nicole Garcia), and an ambitious radio-station bureaucrat (Roger-Pierre)—are interwoven with the theories of biologist Henri Laborit about how our “natural” instincts are determined by cultural forces. Entertaining rather than didactic, ONCLE was one of Resnais’s biggest commercial hits. In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
- November 14th—5:00pm
- November 18th—8:00pm
MURIEL
(MURIEL, OU LE TEMPS D’UN RETOUR)
1963, Alain Resnais, France, 116 min.
With Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Baptiste Thierrée
"A subtle, precise, and wrenching film."—Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Though it did not achieve the notoriety of HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR and LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, this subtler and more naturalistic work is considered by many critics to be Resnais’s masterpiece. As in HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, Resnais parallels private anguish with historical atrocity. Delphine Seyrig plays a Boulogne antique-dealer whose memories are awakened by the arrival of a former lover with his young “niece” in tow; meanwhile, her stepson, recently returned from the Army, struggles with his memories of an Algerian girl who was tortured to death. In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
- November 28th—3:00pm
- November 30th—6:00pm
PRIVATE FEARS IN PUBLIC PLACES
(COEURS)
2006, Alain Resnais, France, 120 min.
With Sabine Azéma, André Dussollier
"Dark, exquisite, highly personal. . . an eloquent testimony to how distilled Resnais's art has become."—Jonathan Rosenbaum, Sight & Sound
Based on a play by Alan Ayckbourn, PRIVATE FEARS follows an ensemble of well-heeled Parisians through interlocking plotlines involving real estate, romance, religion, pornography, and loneliness. It starts out looking like a brittle comedy of manners, but the subtle intensity of Resnais's style builds a tender, melancholy power that becomes overwhelming. The ravishing mise-en-scène, warmed by vibrant colors and cooled by constantly falling snow, should be seen only on the big screen. In French with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (MR)
- November 28th—5:15pm
- December 2nd—8:00pm
SAME OLD SONG
(ON CONNAÎT LA CHANSON)
1997, Alain Resnais, France, 120 min.
With Sabine Azéma, Agnès Jaoui
"An enchanting entertainment."
—Andrew Sarris, New York Observer
The biggest popular hit of Resnais's career, this sparkling romantic comedy revolves around two contrasting sisters: outwardly serious, inwardly foolish Camille (Jaoui), a tour guide/doctoral student who falls for a slick young realtor; and outwardly vivacious, inwardly desperate Odile (Azéma), who seeks escape from her dull marriage by flirting with an old flame and buying a gaudy, overpriced apartment. Dedicated to Dennis Potter, the film borrows the PENNIES FROM HEAVEN device of characters lip-synching to old pop songs, but in a more fluid, fragmentary way that follows the contours of subjectivity à la Resnais. In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
- November 21st—5:00pm
- November 25th—8:00pm
STAVISKY
1974, Alain Resnais, France, 120 min.
With Jean-Paul Belmondo, Charles Boyer
"Resnais models his liquid, bittersweet style on Lubitsch, and the shimmering, romantic results are often spellbinding and haunting."—Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Like LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, STAVISKY is set amid palatial corridors, where mirages of a much different sort materialize. Belmondo gives one of his best performances in this lush, fact-based period-piece about the Russian-Jewish con artist whose financial chicanery led to the downfall of the French Left in the 1930s. Charles Boyer, in his last major role, is tremendously moving as an old-guard aristocrat dazzled by Stavisky's dreams. Music by Stephen Sondheim. In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
- November 7th—3:00pm
- November 9th—8:00pm