Last Year At Marienbad: DIR: Alain Resnais: Fox Lorber

I has been having this dialogue with a friend of mine, the mastermind of frillr.com about the strange lure of boredom. Or to be precise the perverse act of watching beautiful people on screen being very bored. We went through a crash course of 70's Warhol Movies (Trash , Bad, Women In Revolt) and have now moved onto the very austure Alain Renais stuff. The big must-watch? The legendary 1961 film “Last Year At Marienbad ” starring Giorgio Albertazzi as an impeccably dressed stranger trying to convince an even more impeccable Delphine Seyrig that they were past lovers. The beautiful thing about the film (apart from the absolute boredom of the beautiful cast) is the obsessive geometric arrangements the director constructs from framing to mise en scene to lighting to tracking shots. Very French in that Cartesian way. The tension and the control of the visual design of this film says a lot about the formal conventions, ritual conversations, and lifeless parlor games of fashionable society. And if Delphine looks particulary “coutured-out”, maybe it’s because all the costumes were designed by Chanel. Coco Chanel that is. I'm not sure what's happening with the rights to this film but I dream that Criterion has it high on the list for a digital remastering.