La Jetée

LA JETEE (DVD)
Optimum Home Entertainment

Release date: August 22nd, 2011
Certificate (UK): PG
Running time: 28 minutes

Year of production: 1962

Country of origin: France
Original language: French with English subtitles and dubbing

Writer and director: Chris Marker
Composer: Trevor Duncan

Narrator: Jean Négroni
Cast: Helene Chatelain, Jacques Ledoux, Davos Hanich

Chris Marker’s Website

Chris Marker has always been the type of filmmaker whose work falls into the category of thoughtful and challenging, and by nature he’s a storyteller. He documents history and builds a narrative around what he observes and the results have always been profound, so much so that his ideas continue to influence filmmakers today.

His 1962 short film, La Jetée, was no different. Told with still images shot in black and white, and featuring narration by Jean Négroni, it’s the story of a man marked by an image from his childhood.

Set in the aftermath of World War III in the bombed out city of Paris, we meet survivors who are kept underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries. This is where experiments in time travel are taking place. It’s also where we meet an un-named man, a prisoner, he’s the only one who can withstand the effects of the experiments. He’s desperate to solve the puzzle of the image that haunts him; when he witnessed the death of a man, and the woman who watched it with him. Her face remains burned in his memory.

The scientists hope that by calling on the past and the future, they can rescue the present. After many attempts, they succeed in placing him in pre-war times where he meets this mysterious woman. As he continues to visit her and learn more about what life was like before the war, they inevitably become drawn to each other, but in his present time when he learns he’s about to be executed, he has the choice to escape to the far future or the past.

His choices will complete the circle of events he first witnessed as a child. If time is real, as many believe it is, then here once an event has occured, it will always occur and can never be undone or escaped.

Like fellow filmmaker Alain Resnais who documented the horrors of the Holocaust and the bombing of Hiroshima, Marker too was afflicted by the machinery of war in the 20th century. La Jetée tells of the destruction of mankind’s soul in a story that’s bleak and barren in the landscape it portrays, but it’s filled with so much humanity and understanding of the effect of our actions on the environment and life for others. I could not help but be moved by it and amazed by the power of its story.

It’s an astounding example of what you can do as a filmmaker once you have a great story. Without special effects, the visuals are entirely crafted out of still images. The impact is far stronger compared to other films that have everything but such a powerful story.