Movie Melting Pot… ‘La Jetee’ (France, 1962)

“Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. Later on they do claim remembrance when they show their scars. That face he had seen was to be the only peacetime image to survive the war. Had he really seen it? Or had he invented that tender moment to prop up the madness to come?”  

French filmmaker Chris Marker’s 1962 short film, ‘La Jetee’, is a remarkable work of photography and story telling. Â  Running just 28 minutes, the film is told almost entirely through still photography and voiceover narration. Â  Even such, the world that Mark creates in this sci-fi tale is both hauntingly beautiful and epically tragic.

For anyone who has seen Terry Gilliam’s ’12 Monkeys’, ‘La Jetee’ was essentially a precursor to that film. Â  In ‘La Jetee’, World War III has ravage the planet, and inhabitants of a destroyed Paris live underground in the aftermath. Â  There are scientists among them who research time travel. Â  Time-travel experiments are done on a prisoner hoping to send the man back and forth in time to bring supplies to them. Â  The prisoner has a recurring dream of an event he witnessed as a child, a man being shot at an airport terminal and a woman witnessing the shooting.

Unlike ’12 Monkeys’, a somewhat overblown and sometimes quite silly film, ‘La Jetee’ tells the same story in a stark, unflinching manner and at a fourth of the time Gilliam’s film takes. Â  It’s one of the most incredible science fictions stories ever put to film. Â  Just the manner in which the story plays out is so innovative, it is a style that has rarely ever been seen since. Â  Marker took hundreds of optically printed photographs and ran through them as a photomontage. Â  There is only one, brief shot that was shot with a motion-picture camera.

‘La Jetee’ is more readily available than one would think a short, French film from the ’60s would be. Â  Theaters will often run this in front of feature-length films. Â  In fact, ‘La Jetee’ was first shown in theaters before Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Alphaville’, another incredible science fiction film. Â  ‘La Jetee’ is shown from time to time on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) or on the Independent Film Channel (IFC). Â  College courses on film and photgraphy alike will often show ‘La Jetee’. Â  It is available on a Criterion Collection DVD that also includes another short film by Marker, ‘Sans Soleil’. Â  This DVD is available on Region 1 and Region 2 discs.

The critiques of the film found on Rotten Tomatoes are almost universally positive. Â  Some critics call the film a “masterpiece”, “powerful, haunting, unforgettable”, and “one of the best of all SF films.” Â  It is Bryant Frazer of deep-focus.com who puts it best, though. Â  In his review for the film, he states, “It’s no exaggeration, finally, to say that ‘La Jetee’Â  may represent film’s closest approach to poetry.”

‘La Jetee’ has been an inspiration on film for decades. Â  ‘Akai Megane’ (‘The Red Spectacles’) is a Japanese film from 1987 directed by Mamoru Oshii (‘Ghost in the Shell’, ‘Avalon’). Â  Oshii has stated that ‘La Jetee’ is one of his favorite films, and ‘Akai Megane’ was inspired by Marker’s film. Â  Gilliam’s 1995 film, ‘Twelve Monkeys’, is essentially a feature-film version of the same story, only the world has been ravaged by a virus instead of a global conflict.

In 1996, the MIT Press released ‘La Jetee’ in book for. Â  In it, the film’s original photos were reproduced and the script, both in English and in French, was written out. Â  The book was out of print until April of this year when Zone Books re-released it.

‘La Jetee’ is essential viewing for all fans of film. Â  Even movie watchers who are not keen on the idea of science fiction will admire the work and poetry that went into making this film. Â  It is truly one of the greatest science fiction films ever made.