Why One of the Weirdest Films of All Time Deserves Another Look and Listen
by Donald Wallace
Sixty years after its release, Last Year at Marienbad by the French director, Alain Resnais, remains a challenging film to say the least. The plot seems incoherent, the black and white cinematography peculiar, and the music puzzling. In short, everything seems out of sync. Hailed at the time as a modernist masterpiece, Marienbad’s plot and story as well as its image and sound are incomprehensible and deeply at odds with mainstream cinema. Resnais and film composer Francis Seyrig broke all cinematic conventions to create a counter piece to classical Hollywood cinema. In particular, the film’s underscore operates in a way where the principles of traditional film music are violated. To the average viewer, the film is not particularly amusing, but it is important to explore films outside of your comfort zone to find beauty in the unordinary.
In a 1961 interview, Resnais stated that he wanted each spectator to come up with their own solution to his film. This task remains difficult as the plot is like a puzzle that can be assembled differently. The film’s manipulation of time through the use of flashbacks, flash-forwards, and repeated scenes bewilders the spectator and creates a fragmented, discontinuous atmosphere for a first-time viewer. There are three main characters: two men, X and M, and a woman, A, in an elegant hotel setting. According to film scholar Ellen Schwartz, the plot tells the “story” or the “non-story” of the pair, A and X, who may or may not have met the previous year at a hotel in Marienbad. M might be A’s husband and X wants to persuade the woman that they met the previous year and that the woman had promised to leave with X a year later. Film critic Jean-Louis Leutrat mentions that the film raises various questions: did they really meet or is everything a dream? Was seduction or a rape involved in their assumed sexual encounter? Is she pretending to forget? Who really is M—a brother, husband, or friend?
Two major parts of this cinematic puzzle are sound and music. Film scholar Claudia Gorbman, in her 1987 seminal study of film music, Unheard Melodies, outlines the six key uses of music in film. Marienbad violates all of Gorbman’s uses of score. Her first principle, inaudibility, states that “music is not meant to be heard consciously” because it is supposed to subordinate itself to the dialogue and visuals. Marienbad’s score is all over the place: disregarding dialogue, being loud sometimes, being quiet at others, and seems out of the ordinary in most scenes. All of these infractions make the score heard to an inordinate extent, violating the inaudibility rule. When two men in the film are having a conversation, a strident organ strikes into the score and completely interrupts their conversation. As Marguerite Valentine describes, the score’s atonality and harshness lack a sense of subordination to the film, making the film and music seem out of sync.
(Notice the music over the dialogue)
One of the most perplexing scenes from the film demonstrates the violation of Gorbman’s invisibility principle which states that the source of musical underscoring should remain hidden from sight. In turn, when the music becomes diegetic, the source of the music is revealed. In the scene below, the depicted band looks to play two violins. Strangely enough, we don’t hear that music. Instead, Resnais chose to continue with the eerie, non-diegetic organ that is heard throughout the film. The combination of events being shown out of order and the odd use of music in certain scenes creates a radical discontinuity between what is heard and what is seen. This uncertainty raises the question of whether certain scenes are real and in the present or just a memory or dream?
The score does nothing to smooth out discontinuities or create a sense of unity in the film as it does in classical underscoring. There are moments of awkward silence, scenes where the score is prolonged, and sequences where the music seems completely disassociated from the film itself. The music does not even suture scenes together! This lack of suture resembles the disconnect between audience and film. The music is not alone in contributing to these discontinuities. Sudden scene cuts, odd stoppages in movement, and jumps between the past and present make it difficult—even impossible—for the audience to follow what is happening in the plot. Again, everything from cinematography to music to cinematic conventions just seems to be out of sync.
As Gorbman describes in Unheard Melodies, music should lead the audience to a certain conclusion or signify actions and emotions in film. The score in Marienbad does not give any cues to the narrative or highlight the emotions of the audience or characters in the film. Marienbad takes an opposite approach to Gorbman’s principle; there’s constant underscoring of a daunting and disturbing organ in all but two parts in the film. It did not matter the scene, whether happy or sad, the connotation that the music produced remained the same. This is what Valentine meant when she said “the music challenges … understanding.” The misuse of music vexes the audience for a seemingly unknown reason. Why would Resnais choose to confuse his audience?
A variety of other films in history have infringed upon Hollywood cinematic conventions, but typically the directors have reasons for doing so. For example, director of Deadpool, Tim Miller, “broke the fourth wall” when he had Deadpool address the audience. Every spectator was able to pick up on Miller’s comedic technique. Additionally, Christopher Nolan told his film Memento in reverse “in order to give the film its meaning.” Essentially, the main character has short term memory loss, and Nolan wanted to give the audience the same experience as the main character. On the other hand, the debilitated, out-of-order, and confusing storytelling combined with the constant violations of Gorbman’s principles of film music in Marienbad seem to have little to no meaning other than to confuse the spectator. Consequently, one may ask the question, why exactly was this film made and why does it matter?
The reasoning behind this enigma of a film and its violations are discovered when one looks at the film from a distance. Marienbad was made for the sole purpose of breaking rules. Film critic, Roger Ebert, asserts that Resnais sought out to produce a “deliberate, artificial artistic construction” of a film that would serve that exact purpose—to create a film that could be interpreted in an original way. Resnais challenges traditional narrative techniques and uses of film music in order to entice the audience to explore the film authentically. Based on today’s standards, the film is not particularly entertaining. This does not mean that we cannot take something away from this mysteriously beautiful film. This film is not for everyone, but it is important to expose yourself to works of art that you would not typically go out of your way to see. Last year at Marienbad resembles a film that can broaden someone’s horizons as it is a historically problematic film to understand and in one line: the movie is out of sync.