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ou "L'inacceptable iruption du désir" / "The Unacceptable Eruption Of Desire". Alain Resnais / Adolfo Bioy Casares 1961, Grand Prix à Venise, avec l'iconique Delphine Seyrig. Tous renseignements à Imdb et dans toutes les encyclopédies du cinéma sérieuses. Seminal masterpiece that informed many a subsequent portrayal of statuesque Tuxedoed conventions verging on science-fiction; even infiltrated the world of pop videos : Blur-"To The End". A nothing short of narcotic experience that entranced Jean Cocteau and many others since. Question : pourquoi regarder "...Marienbad" en 2004 ? Pour montrer que l'intelligence, la Culture, la beauté, ça marche encore, à n'importe quelle époque. -Même en ces temps de matraquage multimillions hollywoodien de synergies commerciales destinées à faire ingurgiter à nos gosses des jeux vidéos martiaux, bandes-sons gueulantes compilations de vieux succès et autres pseudo-dérivés qui sont en fait les objets principaux de l'entreprise cooptée par les médias publiphiles. Allez jeter un oeil aux critiques auto-proclamés d'Imdb élevés au MacDo / MTV / millionnaire Bush qui déclarent fièrement (in a definitive manner) que le film est "con" sinon "nul". De quoi en pleurer ! Comme disait l'autre : pourquoi luttons-nous. Pour l'Art, tout simplement. "Marienbad", pour peu qu'on se donne la peine de le regarder, remet les pendules (molles) à l'heure. Pour faire la nique aux cons, ceux par exemple qui déclarent qu'"un bon film, c'est un bon scénario". Eh bien non, un bon film, ça peut être un bon scénario certes; mais c'est bien plus que ça : c'est un savant mélange de dialogue, photographie, mise en scène, jeu d'acteurs, musique, décors, costumes, effets de son, etc. etc. etc.. Réhabilitons le septième art ! Comme dirait l'impertinent Film Incohérences, "I Know What You Did Last Year In Marienbad". Le désir intempestif, cette éruption qui dérange les habitudes bien réglées, convenances sociales qui font qu'on ne crie pas en société. Et la femme lutte, elle ne veut pas donner libre cours à ce désir qui l'assaillit, ce désir que l'homme méditerranéen évoque, rappelle, suggère. Cet hôtel si intimidant, glacial, géométrique, flanqué d'un jardin "à la française" : géométrique, d'où les fleurs sont exclues. Le classicisme allemand contre l'évasion vers le Sud ?
Structuring the undefined The first half of the film is fairly well defined : a very literary text by Robbe-Grillet ebbs and flows, resurfacing every now and then above the narcotic organ music, to trap the characters and viewers inside "this hotel, these deep corridors etc.", as in concentric circles, ripples preventing their growth / their escape beyond these confines. When the couple manage to outlive the recurring couplets of the establishing (in more ways than one) litany, they will be able to impose a outward dash that constitutes their way out of this plush prison. Repetition. Now, repetition may play several parts. Most people will find it boring..., it may become irritating after a while..., it may also be narcotic..., it finally can be reassuring : comforting. The characters in "Marienbad" obviously spend their time vacationing, part of an elite that sojourns in prestigious hotels, where they are waited upon and play games, watch plays, and listen to concerts. Not exactly back-breaking ! They also already know each other, and chat about non essential subjects. This is the world which statu quo the intruder threatens, this is the trance from which he wants to take her away. One can understand her resistance. After all, where exactly does he promise to take her ? It is never said. What happens at the end ? It is not shown. There will only be one setting : the castle. In a totally different context (but nevertheless charming), "The Graduate"'s Dustin Hoffman pries Katharine Ross away from her WASP groom, only to find themselves in a bus... where they suddenly realise they haven't got a clue as to where they're headed. One can also think of "Jack" trapped inside the Overlord Hotel of "The Shining" "for ever and ever".
The dialogue uttered by the characters / extras at the start of the film, as the camera ruthlessly pans and scans the setting like a photocopier, is worth noting. These are mere fragments of sentences, portions of conversations that are, every time, cut off before coming to their point. These are literally pointless, as in deprived of their reference(s). These conversations are worthless, if you want. We are in a surreal world, where nothing precisely matters. The extras' dialogue, in "Marienbad", is so voluntarily aimless that it even boasts a nonexistent proverb, half-stated twice ! (Or if it does, this writer has never ever heard it.) The couple mention Mariennad, ...but they're not even sure it was the place where they met; nothing is for sure. A quick word about Seyrig's diction : it is peculiar, unnatural, like the one of an automat. As many an iconic female figure, she was soon portrayed / caricatured by female impersonators : cf. Truffaut's "Domicile conjugal" ...where of course she stars. (The film includes a full-on fantasy fulfilling scene in which she turns up at Léaud's bedroom, gulp.)
Figures hiératiques. Bear in mind that he and she don't even bear a name. She could be any woman, he could be any man; or rather, she can be seen as the archetypal wife and he can be presented as the stereotypical lover, with Sacha Pitoeff as the husband figure. In other words, the classic trio. Their story can be read as what happens to any (repressed but well-off, sleepwalking but yet able to react) married woman suddenly confronted with a tempting seducer. But I must also point out another, generally neglected, character. There is another woman character, with lines too, who pops up every now and then. Not only that, but she wears a white dress -as Delphine Seyrig does at times, in the flashbacks narrating her infidelity the previous year. Aha ! What can this mean ? Could this indicate an echo / un prolongement : the classic temptation affecting the main protagonist can equally apply to other women. Watch the other actors closely, these rigid living dolls : apart from one who loses his self-control, nobody even blinks. Regardez-les : à part un par accident, les extras / seconds rôles ne cillent pas.
Briser l'éternel retour / break the circle. Now, place yourself in the man's shoes. He fell in love the summer before and failed to entice his loved one away; he goes on vacation elsewhere ...and comes across (the first shots establish him arriving at the hotel reception) the same woman ! Not only that, she fails not to remember him or any of their affair. She still is under her -presumed- husband's influence, a constantly ethereal, idle, grande-bourgeoise with no proper existence to speak of. He must succeed this time, otherwise their carrousel / manège looks bound to repeat itself (indefinitely... ?). He must not let this new incarnation of hers slip away from him again (one can't help thinking of "Lost Highway" at this stage).
The role of language. Performative function : what language achieves. For instance, to make a promise is to act; that's it, as soon as you've uttered these words, you've acted. Well, two characters, tellingly, use language in this manner in the film, reestablish it as a force : the husband and the lover. The former maintains his control over his wife and the other revelers, the latter tries to emancipate her. As soon as the husband states that he will win every game, he does. Nobody can defeat him at the game of cards. Likewise, he impresses upon his wife her conduct. "Yes..., yes", she tends to agree to everything he suggests. But the newcomer (Giorgio Albertazzi) also reclaims language, from the dead pool where the hotel guests chatter amiably worthless / meaningless mundane trivia. He interacts with her at two levels, in two opposite directions. The first one concerns her memories : he tries to make her remember what happened last year. Then, he tries to influence her and convince her to elope with him. Gradually, she awakens from her slumber, and falls under his insistent persuasion. At several points, dialogue / editing acts as a relay (effet d'entraînement) : the man evokes something that logically appears in the next cut / shot. (Cf. Deville's "Murder In A French Garden" for great examples, or Tsui Hark's slippy fights scenes in "Time And Tide"). Keep your eyes open and you will spot the editing cut, as the camera pans along a wall, 20 minutes into the film. Stychomythie : reprise immédiate du mot-clé de la phrase. Bertrand Blier en joue beaucoup dans ses dialogues.
Un film sur le reniement / negation. Now, the second half of the film gets a bit more complex. Whereas the first half presented and confirmed, the second half sees images (what we are shown) contradict dialogue (what the characters are saying). The lover's memories / statements fly in the face of what is presented. Does he remember wrongly ? Is this the sign that he may be lying, even simply lying from the start ? Or does this show he is deceived or confused by her ? The art of lying. The woman, her inner nature reawakened, may be learning to hide her intentions / feelings from her husband to prepare her escape. Or, equally, she may be lying to her prétendant, scared by the impetuous nature of love / lust (in the second part, the couple gets more physical, he even caresses her left breast.) Or the film may be showing, at this point, how hazy, unreliable, memories are (fast forward a few decades to the summum of this depiction : "Memento", that posits this fundamental potential uncertainty as the source of a possible life-affirming mistake). The woman, to some extent, denies her feelings : 1) to herself, 2) her lover, 3) her husband. 1) One possible angle of analysis : she has blanked out from her memory what has happened the year before, the shooting, (as people, caught in a traumatic situation, sometimes do) and this is why she probably honestly does not recognise her lover. She has been kept in a trance ever since from which she is awakening. Now, it is worth mentioning one of Robbe-Grillet's "Nouveau Roman" novels, in which a blank page plays a crucial part : it should describe a rape that the protagonist commits, but that he blanks out and spends the second half of the book denying ! 2) She doesn't want to give in to the man whom she has already fallen for, mechanically protesting "Non, non... laissez-moi, laissez-moi...". It even seems she betrayed him last time (see my reading of the story down below). 3) She will leave her husband / companion.
Thèse / antithèse / synthèse : the film finally reconciles the two directions (they had an affair; their perceptions are deceptive; she accepts to leave regardless).
On the threshold. Vertiginous vistas. Time and again, the actors stand against straight, deep corridors and long alleys leading away to a vanishing point. One can understand the protagonist's reluctance to embrace these and set off for a long journey deep in the distance with the stranger. She has to make the choice, she can't bring herself to cross the Rubicon. One will have noted that she waits for the twelve strokes of midnight (i.e. the frontier between two days) before acquiescing to leave. Kubrick s'en souviendra, qui basera "Eyes Wide Shut" sur le principe du cadrage (en plus compliqué des couleurs bleu / orange) : le pauvre Tom Cruise passera son temps à essayer de se faire encadrer / accepter dans un rectangle; il n' y arrivera pas (même pas à intégrer un cercle !)
Inevitable Problems -What is this letter she tears up at the end ? Help, Messrs.. Freud / Poe / Lacan ! -She is a blank page. The immaculate Delphine Seyrig plays it as emotionless as possible, relating to her is pure guesswork. The character is such an enigma throughout that her true feelings can only be glimpsed through rare cracks in her impeccable demeanour. She keeps repeating the same banal, automatic, denegations; and she adopts the same postures and reserved dresses. Except she doesn't. At the end, she suddenly breaks down and screams in the bar, shocking all the bystanders. But this is not the first time she acted out of the ordinary : she first / once responded to a peculiar (incongrue) remark by the stranger, who thus made his entrance and which funded their relationship. Secondly, her costumes : she is also seen sporting a white, fluffy, nightdress (nighttime / romantic connotations) ...which the stranger has been privy to. -What about the multiple copies of the compromising photo ? I will interpret it as the sign of an eternal return : year after year, the same story involving these two characters returns / is bound to return.
An attempt at deciphering the plot
And now, for those who are desperate for a plot, an "explanation" (-ha !). Here is my take on the story, take it for what it is, no doubt Resnais will find much to laugh about it ! A man approaches an inscrutable woman in a luxury hotel where an upper class of somnambulists vacation, sleepwalking aimlessly. He reminds her that they started an affair the summer before at another location, and that she had agreed to elope with him. But she doesn't remember anything, she doesn't remember him at all. He insists, reminding her of many details, even producing a photograph as proof. Their problem : she is married (or at least has an undefined partner). The woman's resistance starts to crumble. But a series of flashbacks seems to show that, the year before, she reneged on her promise and informed her shootist husband of their plan; he then pretended to shoot her dead, the night her lover was to take her away. (She may have lost her mind in the process.) She agrees (again), this time, to escape from her husband's clutches and from the narcotic grip of the hotel. She runs away with the Italian man, leaving her husband behind.
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