So I'm reading, perhaps, the most difficult screenplay written in the 20th century. It is the screenplay to Last Year at Marienbad. It was written by Allen Robbe Grillet who was a proponent of the "noveau roman" a literary movement which championed a rebirth of the novel form in France. It went right along with the French New Wave film movement. In fact the screenplay is by Robbe Grillet, but the film is directing by Alain Resnais (that's re-nay). It's been sometime since anyone has written about Resnais. I guess Jean luc Godard and Francios Truffaut are more popular topics to write about. It's too bad that Resnais gets overshadowed by the other Cahiers critics turned directors. He is the most complicated and avant garde of the group which I have encountered. I suppose Jacques Rivette might be more avant garde.and I've only seen Pari Nous Apartient. So I don't really know his work. Too bad I don't live near Lincoln Center since they are doing, or did a retrospective of his work along with David Lynch's. A comparison of two very formalistic directors. I can't wait to get my hands o the Out 1 by Rivette. It looks long and complicated.
Anyway back to the screenplay. It has no character names. It has the hardest to follow camera direction. And it's set in some kind of New Year's Eve party at a hotel in Germany. So far I haven't really encountered the plot. I've seen the movie once before. And I got the gist of what happened. We'll see after I read the whole script what more I missed on my passive watching of the film. And I will watch it twice. Not once. Twice.
The Resnais film that is famous is Hiroshima Mon Amour. I first heard about the film when I was reading a book about film producing. I bought the film and watched it. In fact I think I had it or had lost it and had to buy it again. It was an excellent film. Yet, before I had read the script I missed a lot of the plot. Reading the script really gets me to catch all the details in the film. Before, with a complicated movie like Hiroshima Mon Amour, I usually get the major theme and able to follow the plot. Yet, somethings, like the fact the Riva's character was with a Nazi soldier at the end of the war eluded me. I totally missed it. Picking up on her character reveals a deeper theme to the film about war and memory. Watching the first part of the film really jarred me with images of Japanese people suffering the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Was the bombing really necessary? Couldn't the US have threatened Japan with the bomb? Then if they didn't surrender used it on a desserted island to show how powerful it was?
And Riva's character was so innocent. So young. How could she be blamed for going with the Nazi Soldier? I think it was absurd the way she was treated. Furthermore I find French history deeply unsettling. How could they treat Riva's character so bad and proclaim the Nazis as the ultimate evil after the occupation, then go right back to oppressing Vietnam and Algeria? I still get no answer to this question. I suppose the response was the 1968 demonstrations. I should really look for a history book that delves into the issues of French Imperialism after WWII. Even to this day the French are very sensitive to Nazism. But where is the sympathy for victims of French colonialism? Where are objections to France's actions in Algeria? I guess I should recall, like I was when I was reading the New York Times the other day, debates about human nature. Is man naturally evil or good? It seems the more I read about the World, the more I think man is naturally evil and needs to reigned in. I recall Jean Jacques Rousseau, "man is free, and everywhere he is in chains."
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