Editing Last Year at Marienbad (section)

==Production==
''Last Year at Marienbad'' was created out of an unusual collaboration between writer [[Alain Robbe-Grillet]] and director [[Alain Resnais]]. Robbe-Grillet described its basis:
{{blockquote|Alain Resnais and I were able to collaborate only because we saw the film in the same way from the start; and not just in the same general outlines but exactly, in the construction of the least detail as in its total architecture. What I wrote might have been what was already in his mind; what he added during the shooting was what I might have written. ... [P]aradoxically enough, and thanks to this perfect identity of our conceptions, we almost always worked separately.{{sfn|Robbe-Grillet|1962|p=8}}}}

The screenplay Robbe-Grillet wrote was very detailed, specifying not only the dialogue and gestures and décor, but also the placement and movement of the camera and the sequencing of shots in the editing. Resnais filmed the script with great fidelity, and when Robbe-Grillet, who was not present during the filming, saw the rough cut, he said he found the film just as he had intended it, while recognizing how much Resnais had added to make it work on the screen and fill out what was absent from the script. Robbe-Grillet published his screenplay, illustrated by shots from the film, calling it a "''ciné-roman''" (ciné-novel).{{sfn|Robbe-Grillet|1962|pages=9–10}}

Despite the close correspondence between the written and filmed works, numerous differences between them have been identified. Two notable examples are the choice of music in the film (Francis Seyrig's score introduces extensive use of a solo organ), and a scene near the end of the film in which the screenplay explicitly describes a rape, whereas the film substitutes a series of repeated [[Exposure (photography)#Overexposure and underexposure|overexposed]] [[tracking shot]]s moving towards the smiling woman.{{sfn|Leutrat|2000|pages=52–60}} In statements by the two authors of the film in the decades after its release, it was partly acknowledged that they did not entirely share the same vision of it. According to Resnais, Robbe-Grillet used to insist that it was he who wrote ''Marienbad'', without question, and that Resnais's filming of it was a betrayal—but that, since he found it very beautiful, he did not blame Resnais for it.{{sfn|Benayoun|1980|p=103}}

Filming took place, using black-and-white film and the Dyaliscope widescreen process, over a period of ten weeks between September and November 1960. Most of [[Delphine Seyrig]]'s dresses in the film were designed by [[Chanel]].{{sfn|Leutrat|2000|p=70}}{{sfn|Wilson|2006|p=73}} The locations used for most of the interiors and the gardens were the palaces of [[Schleissheim Palace|Schleissheim]] and [[Nymphenburg Palace|Nymphenburg]] (including the [[Amalienburg]] hunting lodge) and the Antiquarium of the [[Munich Residenz]], all in [[Munich]]. Additional interior scenes were filmed in the Photosonore-Marignan-Simo studios in [[Paris]]. No filming was done in [[Mariánské Lázně]] (Marienbad), nor does the film clarify which scenes, if any, are supposed to be set there.{{sfn|Monaco|1978|pages=57–9}}{{sfn|Leutrat|2000|p=70}}<ref>{{cite news |last=de Baecque |first=Antoine |url=http://next.liberation.fr/cinema/2004/08/27/ce-lieu-reel-n-existe-pas-ou-si-peu_490428 |title="Ce lieu réel n'existe pas, ou si peu..." |newspaper=[[Libération]] |language=fr |date=27 August 2004 |access-date=10 October 2015}}</ref>

===Style===
[[File:last year marienbad.jpg|thumb|left|Still from ''Last Year at Marienbad''. In this surreal image, the people cast long shadows, but the trees do not, because the shadows were painted and the scene shot on an overcast day.]]

In determining the visual appearance of the film, Resnais said he wanted to recreate "a certain style of silent cinema", which he sought to produce through his direction as well as the actors' make-up;{{sfn|Armes|1968|p=105}} he even asked [[Eastman Kodak]] if they could supply an old-fashioned film stock that would "bloom" or "halo" to create the look of a silent film, but they could not.{{sfn|Monaco|1978|p=55}} Resnais showed his costume designer photographs from [[Marcel L'Herbier]]'s ''[[L'Inhumaine]]'' (1924) and ''[[L'Argent (1928 film)|L'Argent]]'' (1928), for which great fashion designers of the 1920s had created the costumes, and asked members of his team to look at other silent films, particularly [[G. W. Pabst]]'s ''[[Pandora's Box (1929 film)|Pandora's Box]]'' (1929), as he wanted Seyrig's appearance and manner to resemble that of [[Louise Brooks]] in that film.<ref>Renais interview on Criterion supplemental DVD</ref> The style of silent films is also suggested by the manner in which the characters who populate the hotel are mostly seen in artificial poses rather than behaving naturalistically.{{sfn|Monaco|1978|p=64}}

The film creates ambiguity in the spatial and temporal aspects of what it shows and creates uncertainty in the mind of the spectator about the causal relationships between events. This is achieved through editing by giving apparently incompatible information in consecutive shots, or within a single shot that seems to show impossible juxtapositions, or by means of repetitions of events in different settings. These ambiguities are matched by contradictions in the narrator's voice-over commentary.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bordwell |first1=David |author-link1=David Bordwell |last2=Thompson |first2=Kristin |author-link2=Kristin Thompson |url=https://archive.org/details/filmartintroduct00bord_0/page/390/mode/2up |title=Film Art: An Introduction |edition=4th |location=New York |publisher=[[McGraw-Hill]] |year=1993 |pages=391–6 |isbn=978-0-0711-2943-5 |url-access=registration}}</ref> Among the notable images in the film is a scene in which two characters (and the camera) rush out of the château and are faced with a tableau of figures arranged in a geometric garden; although the people cast long dramatic shadows (which were painted on the ground), the trees in the garden do not (and are, in fact, not real trees, but constructions).

The manner in which the film is edited creates a highly [[nonlinear narrative]].{{sfn|Monaco|1978|p=53}} It allowed the themes of time and the mind and the interaction of past and present to be explored in an original way.{{sfn|Armes|1968|p=185}} As the methods of filming and editing destroyed spatial and temporal continuity, the film offers instead a "mental continuity", a continuity of thought.{{sfn|Brunius|1962|p=123}}

While films that immediately preceded and followed ''Marienbad'' in Resnais's career showed a political engagement with contemporary issues, ''Marienbad'' focused principally on style.{{sfn|Monaco|1978|p=53}} Commenting on this departure, Resnais said: "I was making this film at a time when I think, rightly, that one could not make a film, in France, without speaking about the [[Algerian War]]. Indeed I wonder whether the closed and stifling atmosphere of ''L'Année'' does not result from those contradictions."{{sfn|Wilson|2006|loc=p. 84: "Et faire ce film au moment où je crois, justement, qu'on ne peut faire de film, en France, sans parler de la guerre d'Algérie. D'ailleurs, je me demande si l'atmosphère close et étouffante de ''L'Année'' ne résulte pas de ces contradictions."}}