If a text can be said to determine its own reading then Alain Resnais's "Last Year at Marienbad" [... ] is a paradigmatic instance of a phenomenological film. Not only does it posit such a reading, but its very structuration can be seen as...

Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad (1961), from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet, will be revived for the first time in decades at Film Forum for two weeks from Jan. 18 through Jan. 31 in a new 35mm Scope print. It was Resnais’ second feature-length...

BRYANT PARK, THE SALON, 1:15 P.M.—Moments before the Duckie Brown autumn/winter 2008 show began, a few stragglers found their seats, bass-heavy trance blared. Seat F-25 (male, effeminate, floor-length alpaca sweater, glasses): “Oh, my god! I didn’t see you there!” Seat F-28 (male, euro-butch, fur-trimmed puff-parka,...

In 1967, a Time magazine cover story trumpeted “The Shock of Freedom in Films,” praising Hollywood’s belated embrace of the French New Wave. The article mostly paid enormous respects to Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, but passing mention was made of how Mike Nichols’...

Last Year at Marienbad is a useful example of a film which attempts to show that cinema is able to describe psychological drama. The more detailed the description, the more "scientific" the forms; the more "scientific" the forms, the more abstracted from their environment the objects become. Resnais' documentary style (for example, long traveling shots) appears to work in this film visually to synthesize the "felt" with the "seen" object or obje...

Be prepared for an experience such as you've never had from watching a film when you sit down to look at Alain Resnais' "Last Year at Marienbad."… It may grip you with a strange enchantment, it may twist your wits into a snarl, it may leave your mind and senses toddling vaguely in the regions in between. But this we can reasonably promise: when you stagger away from it, you will feel you have delighted in (or suffered) a unique and intense experience.