Customer Reviews

La Jetee [VHS]

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

'La Jetee' is a pier in Orly airport on the eve of World War 3 and the destruction of Paris; a barely distinguishable harbour in a concrete sea. Despite the title, the only mention of water in Chris Marker's film is to the waves of memory that carry the hero back to his past. He is now a prisoner in an underground labyrinth undergoing experiments by scientists who, space having been made redundant, hope to puncture a hole in time, through which men can be sent to bring back desperately-needed supplies. After many failures resulting in death or madness, they have chosen the hero because of his singular imaginative life, fixated on one moment in his childhood on the pier, the face of the woman who haunts him, staring at an unknown man rushing through the crowd. Meeting her in the past, they go for walks, visit museums, sunbathe, sleep. The journey to the past being so successful, they try to send him to the future.

Marker calls 'La Jetee' a photo-novel, and it is composed entirely of photographical stills, except for one montage that secretes a surprise that is one of the most unexpected, literally eye-opening joys of the cinema, all the more precious considering the general gloom of the work, the foreboding atmosphere of death, the images of destruction, the frozen tableaux of torture and sufering. The term 'photo-novel' however, implies that the film could just as easily be enjoyed as a book, and Marker has released 'La Jetee' in such a format. But the film doesn't work this way - not only is the editing and the variation of pacing the images crucial to how we receive them, long-held compositions alternating with abrupt montages; but these sets of images interplay with a typically layered Marker soundtrack. This soundtrack itself has at least three components - the narrating voice, authorial yet phantasmal; the (often sacred) music; and the manipulated ambient sound, whether it is the conspiratorial whispers that accompany the underground experimental sessions, or the sinister, pumping beat that segues imperceptibly into Herrman's score for 'Vertigo' for the sequoia sequence.

Like Hitchcock's film, Marker's ur-text, 'La Jetee' is a bleak study in memory, in the tricks it plays, in its fusions with fantasies, desires, lies and repression, in its importance for defining the self or its dissolution. For Marker, this interest has always been political, revealing the fragility of the subject caught in the annihilating marches of history, a history it tries to transcend or evade, but which eventually swallows it up and spits it out.

'La Jetee' is also an early cinematic classic of post-modernity, a vision of a future Paris that, like Godard's 'Alphaville', is a diagnosis of the present. Marker's fearless command of the abstract rooted in the particular gives his films, and 'La Jetee' especially, a heady charge that could be mistaken for the spiritual (some of the scenes of torture are like religious ecstasies sculpted by Bernini), and which is all his own.

The film was excellent, don't get me wrong. It was the quality of the video that ruined my enjoyment of it. I first saw the film in college during a film studies class, and it remains to be one of the coolest films ever. However, the video was grainy and sometimes it was hard to make out the subtitles. If you've never seen Le Jetee before, don't buy this video. See it on the big screen when it'll be shown with good quality film. Otherwise, you'll end up thinking that this film is lesser than it actually is.

It's surprising that with the popularity of this film and the technologies available presently that the subtitles weren't in yellow or another more visible color, and the transcription of video was so poor. I know there is a DVD version, but it's dubbed and what made Le Jetee special was its quiet Frenchness.

...and I do mean that! I saw this originaly in 1979, in England, and, was surprised to see it as the support feature for teh 1980's release of Vertigo. I was even more surprised to fidn a 16mm print at my local library in Canada, and, then to see it here in Hong Kong last year.The best quality copy is on DVD ("Short" magazine). The U.K. (pal video) is expensive but good quality. The u.S. video is not good...but better than nothing! The english narration version is very different to the french subtitles (changes meaning of sections). DO SEE AND HEAR THIS MOVIE!

Love, Kasperbauer

i got this for la jettee. and although they cram these dvds with all kinds of junk they didn't bother including the original language track which is in my opinion much more true to the atmosphere of the film. so although imdb lists this great short film as being available on dvd, as far as i am concerned it still does not have a decent release.

Made in France by British director Chris Marker, this is a classic short film (only 35 minutes), consisting almost exclusively of a sequence of still images and a narrative. (Watch carefully for moments of moving imagery.)

The subject is an average man, of some unspecified future, obsessed with and devoted to the memory of a woman he may never have met.

La Jetee has a considerable underground reputation, influencing, among others, photographer Cindy Sherman.

La Jetee also moved Terry Gilliam to make 12 Monkeys with Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe.

Despite all the overused words of filmdom, it is still fair to say this film is genuinely haunting. As a work of art, it tests the boundary between the moving image and the still, and proves how moving the still can be.

This is the kind of film to inspire you to go out with your home film (or video) camera to try to make a masterpiece.

I originally saw this short as part of a film festival in Toronto. The stylistic black and white photographs, overlayed with sound and music to create a complex emotion and story, were quite mature and forward thinking for its time.

I also believe this to be a major inspiration for Millennium, although, only for it's costumes, style, and voice.

I recommend seeing this in the original language with subtitles if possible. This was consequently the source material for 12 Monkeys, although they are substantially different in tone and emotion.

While this is also on DVD in "Short 2", I recommend you watch the VHS version here, as the english narration on the DVD is quite distracting.

(Forget the potentially misleading association of "La Jetee" with "Etienne Becker," who is little more than an image in the film written and directed by Chris Marker.)

A jetty extending into the vastness of sea and sky, a man's awareness of the image of a woman he loves immediately followed by his awareness of a threatening agent of death. These are the 3 key images of "La Jetee," a science fiction film that rejects futuristic fantasy and affirms the power of human memory, leaving the viewer with a haunting, unforgettable meditation on the meaning of human existence. The film contains only one shot with motion--so subtle, in fact, that I was unable to discern it in the VHS copy, which I consigned to the garbage. If you can't locate a good 16mm print and projector, look for a sharp DVD copy (but be careful--some DVD editions are nothing more than VHS flawed master copies released in a digital format that merely preserves the fuzziness of the inferior original).

Who would have thought that a 30 minute film made up almost entirely of still images could be one of the most riveting films ever made? The print on this VHS copy is old and dirty, and the subtitles sometimes fade into the background, but no matter; five minutes into this film and you'll forget about the problems with the print.

To say any more about it would give away too much of the story. Suffice it to say that this is one of the truely great science fiction films.

(Five stars if the transfer had been at all worthwhile...) This is one of the most influential movies I've seen in a long time - I've shown it to everyone I could collar. And yet I've always had to wince when I show it - the transfer to video is so bad, I have to read the subtitles to them (which I can only manage because I've seen it so often). Many of the scenes are full of "noise," the contrast fades, etc. So if you can find a copy on DVD (it was released as one of many shorts on a DVD-based magazine, "Short Cinema Journal"), then do that. Otherwise, buy this film!

The first-time viewer of "La Jetee" may be distracted by the subtitles and french narration. The DVD version (still in-print as "Short 2 Dreams") has crystal clear picture and english narration without subtitles. However, if you've only seen the original, this might not seem an improvement. While hearing the voice of a first person narrator can rivet the viewer (as in "Sunset Boulevard") the actual voice of a third person narrator isn't necessary. In fact, having to read the subtitles helps create a bond between viewer and story in "La Jetee." Hearing someone else's voice tell the story is like an annoying person sitting next to you in a movie theater. As I don't understand french, the original narrator became part of the ambience. Unfortunately the DVD doesn't feature the original version, and muting the entire soundtrack while using the TV's closed caption is not a solution. This long-time fan of "La Jette" is still stuck between the muddy VHS version and the picture-perfect but modified DVD.