Editing Last Year at Marienbad (section)

===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."}}