La Jetee/Sans Soleil [Criterion Collection]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

One of the most influential, radical science-fiction films ever made and a mind-bending free-form travelogue: La Jetee (Jean Negroni, Helene Chatelain. 1962/28 min.) and Sans Soleil (Florence Delay, Arielle Dombasle. 1983/100 min.) couldn't seem more different--but they're the twin pillars of an unparalleled and uncompromising career in cinema. Chris Marker has been challenging moviegoers, philosophers, and himself for years with his investigations of time, memory, and the rapid advancement of life on this planet. These two films--a tale of time travel told in still images and a journey to Africa and Japan--remain his best-loved and most widely seen. In French with English audio and subtitles. B&w/NR/fullscreen.

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Subtitle: Eng
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 (Vistavision)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Features:
  • New, restored high-definition digital transfers, approved by director Chris Marker
  • New video interviews with filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin
  • Chris on Chris, a video piece on Marker by filmmaker and critic Chris Darke
  • Two excerpts from the French TV series Court-circuit (le magazine), directed by Luc Lagier: the first, a look at David Bowie's music video for "Jump They Say," inspired by La Jetee; the second, an analysis of Hitchcock's Vertigo and its influence on Marker
  • New and improved English subtitle translations
  • Plus: A booklet featuring a new essay by Marker scholar Catherine Lupton, an interview with Marker, and notes on the films and filmmaking by Marker

AWARDS

• Telluride Film Festival

•     Film Presented - 1987

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Jean Negroni - Narrator
       Helene Chatelain - The Woman
       Alexandra Stewart
       Jacques Ledoux - The Experimentor
       Etienne Becker
       Davis Hanich - The Man

• Director:

  Chris Marker

• Producer:

  Anatole Dauman

• Screenwriter:

  Chris Marker

• Cinematographer:

  Chris Marker

• Composer (Music Score):

  Trevor Duncan

• Editor:

  Jean Ravel, Chris Marker

• Sound Mixer:

  Paul Bertault, Antoine Bonfanti

• Additional Cinematography:

  Eugenio Bentivoglio, Jean-Michel Humeau

REVIEWS:

• A prime example of essay filmmaking, Chris Marker's Sans Soleil has been extensively detailed by film theorists. Admittedly, it's kind of boring, self-indulgent, and pretentious to gaze at people of various Asian and African cultures while a European narrator ponders the meaning of life. On the other hand, it can also be a soul-searching experience for viewers who like when things are open to interpretation. The highbrow language is part of the problem, but the broad statements about humanity and modern life are fortunately aided by effectively small, personal details. One example is a bronze statue at a train station, a tribute to a dog who waited a lifetime for his master to come off the train. These type of nuances set the right tone for getting lost in a kaleidoscope of cultural messages. With such little regard to space, the film is at least firmly centered in terms of time, with 1980s fashions, music, and technology dominating the mood. Two sequences stand out: the juxtaposition of clips from Hitchcock's Vertigo with actual filming locations in San Francisco and the montage of Japanese horror films with sleeping passengers on a train. Both sequences explore the possibilities of spiritual connection in vastly different contexts, leaving one feeling either ignorant or enlightened, or both. These studies of the collective unconscious are certainly ambitious, but the meaning and importance lies in the efforts of the viewer. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
• One of the finest science fiction films ever made, Chris Marker's La jetee is a brilliant philosophical treatise packed into 28 minutes of film. Though it is Marker's only fictional work, it stands as one of the most eloquent visions of his artistic obsessions: travel, images, and memory. Concerning a nameless protagonist who voyages from the radioactive rubble of the post-WWIII present to the verdant past, the film is a travelogue of sorts--a journey through time instead of space--in which the man's childhood memories literally define his existence. Faced with a choice of living in a perfectly ordered distant future or in the moments immediately before nuclear destruction, he chooses to return to the woman from his youthful dreams and live in a vertiginous state of nostalgia. The film's "photo-roman" (still photo) style seems to mirror the impressionistic quality of memory, which the viewer pieces together into a coherent visual experience. Yet, at one point in the film, the protagonist's lover stares into the camera -- until suddenly she blinks. Subtle yet shockingly effective, La jetee brilliantly explodes the rules of what makes a film, forcing the audience to reassess its preconceptions about cinema, as well as about time, memory, and how we experience reality. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi