Customer Reviews

La Jetee/Sans Soleil (The Criterion Collection)

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I am very happy that Chris Marker's La Jette (and Sans Soleil) are on DVD. La Jetee is a wonderful, incredibly haunting film. It can easily be classified as one of the greatest science fiction films ever made in my opinion. It only runs 28 minutes, and is composed of nothing but still images and narration (except for one shot), yet the universe is contained within it. It's that rare cerebral science fiction that hardly gets made these days, along the lines of 2001, Blade Runner, and Solaris (Tarkovsky's version). It was the inspiration for Twelve Monkeys, and while Monkeys is a great film in itself, La Jetee is much more haunting and moving. It's wonderful to be able to see La Jetee in a proper transfer.

La Jetee (1962) is one of the seminal works of the French New Wave as well as one of the all-time great science fiction films. It deserves all the respect it receives but what is really so amazing is how much is achieved with so little. Made entirely of still black and white images--of WWII cities in ruin, of an airport observation deck in the fifties, of generic shots of a woman one could find in any magazine, of a group of men in one of the many tunnels beneath Paris--and a mundane but strangely compelling voice-over, Le Jetee is not so much a film as a series of random images linked only by the narrative spell of a single voice.

We view only one still photo at a time and we assign meaning only because the narrator tells us the significance of each. It doesn't sound like much to describe it so and yet because the technology is so primtive we are somehow less distracted than we would be were this a full-fledged cinematic production with action sequences and a pulsing soundtrack. This is basically a slide-show and that is the key to this films appeal. This film essay works because it asks for a different kind of attention than we are used to giving films. La Jetee asks for a much more personal kind of attention, the kind of attention we give to our own photo albums, slide shows and dreams. But, also, since many of the images look like they could have come from LIFE or National Geographic there is also a kind of generic quality to the slide show and we are lulled into a kind of attentive trance as we get the feeling that Marker is making a connection between our own personal memories/dreams/markers and the generic memories/dreams/markers of the culture at large. Watching this film is like looking at a pile of old magazines and contemplating our own deepest dreams/desires at the same time--perhaps viewing both as vehicles leading to the same place.

The presumption that there is a link between the personal and the universal is not a new idea, it is a presumption that various artists and essayists (Montaigne is the most obvious example) have held throughout history. The idea has developed in two ways. Some (Noam Chomsky is the most famous in our day) argue that the deep structures of the mind are the same in all men regardless of cultural/racial/gender differences. Others argue that man is no particular way but that he is shaped by the culture in which he lives. The former group celebrate universalism (or globalism, a word which began to be used after WWII) and the fact that we are all generic creatures capable of understanding each other. The latter group (and many science fiction writers fall into this group) fear that the more homogenous and pervasive the mass/universal/global culture becomes, the more homogenous man/existence becomes. Marker is in the latter group, so it is no surprise that he has a strange love/hate relationship with technology--for technology is seen to be the thing that facilitates the spreading of sameness as well as the thing that allows us to meditate upon it. In his films there are no special effects nor any of the usual visual or audio markers that we usually equate with science fiction, and the matter-of-fact monotone of the voiceover gives his films the feel of a documentary but a documentary that we somehow feel compelled to watch because as the speaker drones on we are reminded of our own archive of memories and our own personal views on the matters raised. La Jetee alerts us to the importance we place on memory and the recall process in establishing and maintaining an identity in an image saturated world but it also asks us to question the reliability and authenticity of memory and to what extent personal memory has been invaded/colonized by collective memory. In the later Sans Soleil (which makes use of moving images and color and in many ways resembles a contemporary travelogue or catalogue of all the various cultures that co-exist today), Marker alerts us to how conditioned our responses have become. Even in the presence of one exotic culture after another all the narrator can muster is a kind of bored resignation that there is no escape (except perhaps in death, a device/conceit that Godard also makes use of as early as Pierrot le Fou and as recently as Notre Musique) from the universalizing cultural processing machine that we have each internalized and that reduces all to a monotonous sameness.

That said, the films are at once both generic and intensely personal. The latter film is perhaps the more intimate as it is delivered as a personal letter. What is personal about existence and what merely generic is the question that informs every still and every moving image in a Marker film. This strangely unsolvable riddle is what gives the films their timeless power.

This is film essay/art of the highest order.

Sans Soleil has long been one of my favourite films. Superlatives barely begin to scratch the surface, but it is surreal, haunting, poignant, ethereal and unlike any other 'documentary' you have seen or are ever likely too. The film is ultimately about the heartbreaking beauty of the time and place in which we (do or do not) exist. Featuring Marker's central preoccupations of time, space and memory, Sans Soleil needs to be seen to be believed.

Simply stated, this disc features two of the greatest films of the 20th Century. La Jetee is often called a "science fiction" film while Sans Soleil is labeled as a "documentary", however both films defy these simple descriptions. While very different in form, both La Jetee and Sans Soleil will challenge your ideas of memory and time and spacial relationships. These films are absolutely critical viewing for discerning film fans. Kudos to Criterion for finally bringing these films to the U.S. I only wish that other films such as "La Mystere Koumiko" by Marker will follow.

This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the films

La Jetee is about a post World War III Paris where the survivors live underground. One survivor, haunted by dreams about an event in his childhood of a man being gunned down is asked to volunteer to go back in time to bring supplies back to them.

The film is a series of still photographs with narration by an unseen reader.

This film later became the main inspiration for the film Twelve Monkeys.

Sans Soleil is a documentary about life in Japan. The film is in an avant garde style and has elements of the Qatsi trilogy and other films.

Both films are excellent and very nice in this version.

Both films have an optional English dubbed track and two versions of subtitles.

One flaw is they can be out of sync when switched they also have different content. Use the regular subtitles for the French dub and the SDH (Subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing) for the English dub. The SDH subtitles follow the English dub verbatim but are not as precise as the other subtitles.

The special features are an interview with Jean-Pierre Gorin, and excerpts from the French TV program Court-circuit, and exerpts from David Bowie's music video "Jump They Say" which contains a scene inspired by La Jetee.

This is a must buy!

La Jetee (Chris Marker, 1962)

I'm not terribly sure what I can say about Chris Marker's La Jetee that hasn't been said by just about everyone else, so I'll keep this short. You probably already know this, but if you don't, it was the inspiration for David and Janet Peoples' screenplay for the Terry Gilliam film 12 Monkeys, rightly considered by the various-and-sundry on the IMDB message boards to be one of the top 250 movies of all time. (Interestingly, La Jetee has a slightly higher numerical rating; it lacks enough votes to secure a top-250 placing.) But where Gilliam molded the storyline into his most accessible (and commercially successful) film, Marker seemed to have no interest at all in making something accessible, or even likable; it's hard, in fact, to even call La Jetee a film, in the sense we know the word. That, of course, makes it all the more enchanting.

The story (if you haven't seen 12 Monkeys, a quick synopsis: a guy is sent through time in order to try and prevent the war that effectively ended civilization on Earth) is told, with one stunning exception, in a series of still images, over which there is narration. A story is being told, with accompanying pictures. The film, which clocks in at only twenty-eight minutes, barely draws the outline of this story, leaving the viewer to fill in as many of the blanks as he or she wishes. It's a bold move, and when it doesn't work, it's awful. Here, it works on every level it can.

If it were just that, it would be a good movie. Interesting. A nice idea with a cool experimental sheen to it. But Marker turns the whole structure on its head halfway through the movie with a scene that defines "minimalism," but within the context of what we've seen up to this point in the movie, it comes as a shock, an amazing revelation. I won't tell you what happens (other than to say it's a technical thing, not a plot point), because you should feel that shock for yourself the first time you see this movie. But what makes it great it's that it's not just an experimental quirk for the sake of being an experimental quirk. It takes all the notions you have conceived, consciously or not, about these two societies Marker has given us, and twists them around. I can't say any more about it without distorting the perceptions Marker goes to such pains to create; you just have to see it for yourself. And you should, because this is, quite simply, an amazing piece of work. And, really, if you can spare an hour and a half to watch the latest Adam Sandler vehicle, you can carve out half an hour to watch this, no? **** ½

'Sans soleil' is a wonderful film that defies classification (beyond that of 'cult'). If you know anything about this quasi-documentary and the accompanying short, La jetee, (the two bookmark the beginning and the latter stages of a long career), then this review won't tell you anything new, but if you're half-interested/undecided, it might help. 'Sans soleil' takes the form of a letter presented in voice-over narration fashion, describing life in Tokyo, circa early 1980s. Tokyo is presented almost as an alien city, yet the viewer begins to be as fascinated with it as is the narrator. It's no exaggeration to say it's a kind of kaleidoscope or phatasmagoria of images and signs. Occasionally, there are flashes of life in Guinea-Bissau, to which Marker and the letter-reader cross-cut, though the point of which still somewhat escapes me. Tokyo, with its various media images from manga and horror films, seems to stand in for Japan as a whole, though the narrator does go on the odd excursion, for example to Hokkaido, and to a museum dedicated to male fertilty. There are some occasional scenes of extreme violence or just plainly disturbing images (even almost-subliminal out-takes from other films) taken from other media, but the whole is knitted together into an unlikely but rewarding patchwork. You couldn't get this much quality exposure to things Japanese if you watched Japanese TV or stood browsing in a Tokyo bookshop for two weeks non-stop, that's how rich it is. My favourite sequence deals with commuters going through Tokyo Station, ascending and descending stairs and, most especially, dozing off on an overground train. The film may have been shot in the eighties, but you could (if permitted) film identical scenes today). How Marker managed to film this and get permission I will never know (maybe he never did), because he superimposes very telling and sometimes horrifying and yet somehow everyday images onto these poor commuters in a way I find quite mesmerising. The sequence seems to visit and rummage around in the very pysche of what it's like to live, work, and travel in this incredibly busy city. The soundtrack is brilliantly spooky and and an essential part of the experience. 'La jetee' is an amazing science fiction film, though almost completely made up of still images, aside from one short sequence, that tells the story of a love affair that takes place at a time of Armageddon and dizzyingly backtracks to the events that led up to one event. It was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's 'Twelve Monkeys'. Both films are beautifully narrated in French, but there is an optional English narration if you want to really concentrate on the ravishing images. There are some excellent extras, too, including experimental film-maker Gorin talking about Marker.

Just in reply to the other user note about subtitles on the Criterion release: you can turn them off on the 'Languages' menu, it's just kind of awkward and counter-intuitive to figure out how to use the menu, and what 'SDH' means (subtitles for the deaf, I guess).

I do not speak French, and I can't imagine trying to follow anything as dense and philosophical as Sans Soleil via subtitles. The consensus among folks I've talked to who know both languages is that the performance of the English narration is very good. On the other hand, I first saw La Jettee in French with subtitles, and it was easy enough to follow. Hearing the film with English narration, I was greatly diasappointed, as the English narrator sounds bland and too casual for the story. Again, my multilingual acquaintances concur. So, for the best user experience IMHO, watch La Jettee with the French audio and subtitles, so you get the sense of texture from the French voice. It's been released on video before (e.g. in the 'Short' series), but this Criterion edition is the first one that will let you hear the French and get English subs... hooray Criterion!

...and it's a great package, tasteful and appropriate to the content, which is all new digital transfers of both image and sound. The pamphlet is over 40 pages of worthwhile essays, a couple of them by Chris Marker himself. There's also an interview with Marker displaying his rich and light personality--the fellow seems to like to talk, and says many true, wise and funny things.

Whereas La Jetee depends on the conceit of believing the time travel scenario, and identifying so emotionally with the man that the obvious end seems startling, Sans Soleil ends dependent upon the conceit that so much information about the travels of Krasna has so overwhelmed the viewer, and so lulled him with its rhythmic pacing, that the viewer doubts there can be an end to the film, for Krasna is a character so filled with literal self-conceit it is akin to having an inner seat inside the brain of a man who simply loves the sound of his voice, no matter what nonsense it spews. Thus, when an end does come, it seems abrupt. The interesting thing is that while, stylistically, and innovatively, the later film's ending is far more daring, it simply does not affect the viewer the way the more expected ending of La Jetee does, because there is simply no attempt made to build empathy for Krasna, as there is with the man of the earlier film, nor is there any attempt to make Sans Soleil an emotional work of any kind. From the distancing images of the Icelandic children that open and close the film, to the images from The Zone, this film is detached from reality and emotion. It is also even more explicitly a film about perception, not memory, than La Jetee is.

The DVD, put out by The Criterion Collection, is one of its best offerings, even if neither film comes with an audio commentary. Both films are shown in 1.66: aspect ratios. The extra features for La Jetee include video interviews with filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin, a bit of an odd duck, whose small filmic rhapsodies on Marker are a bit too much, in the masturbatory sense. Then there is Chris On Chris, a video on Marker by filmmaker Chris Darke. It's more interesting than Gorin's hyperbolic reactions, but then we get some film clips from a filmmaker who idolizes Marker, and it is so inferior to Marker's work that one can only be thankful the guy gets only a minute or two in the sun. Then there are two excerpts from the French tv series Court-Circuit (Le Magazine). On is a take on David Bowie's music video Jump They Say, reputedly inspired by La Jetée; and the other a delightfully silly homage to Marker's influence by Hitchcock's Vertigo, because it posits that Marker's La Jetee is really about the man traveling in to Vertigo. Naturally, there is not a whit of logic nor proof behind the claim. The extra for Sans Soleil is a seventeen minute interview with Gorin, again. In this extended segment he comes off a bit more knowledgeable than in the deliberately coy smaller excerpts for La Jetee. The musical scoring for both films is very good, with wistful music often acting as the mortar between images in La Jetee, when the images are static and sans narration. All the visuals and editing were done by Marker, and he proves masterful at both.

As these two films are Marker's best known works, and considered his best, one wonders if this is a critical misinterpretation, or apt. Naturally, I'll decide when I see other films of his. That stated, it bears repeating that these films, despite many claims by critics notorious for the tack of critical cribbing, are definitely not about memory. They will use some mnemonic devices, but they are about perception; and there is a difference. Perception is memory in the moment, in the now, whereas memory is perception of the now's shadow, the moment's shadow. Therefore they scan two different beats. One is the thing as it is, and the other a recreation of what seems to be the thing as it was. Memory is always an act of creation, or re-creation, which takes talent and skill to effectively convey. Perception just takes good senses. Perception requires attention. Memory does not. It requires concentration. And, as great as the purely cinematic elements are, as I've shown, both La Jetee and Sans Soleil would be vastly different and inferior films without the narration that sutures word to image, and both to a whole. These films are essential works of art from the 20th Century, and will likely have impacts that reach far into the future, long after much more celebrated works and artists have been forgotten.

Strike memory!