La Jetée (1962) - Chris Marker

Posted by Sam Hayes On Saturday, February 06, 2010
La Jetée is a French film from 1962 which tells the story of a man caught up in World War three, in which Paris is destroyed and a post-apocalyptic struggle takes place underground. The survivors decide that their future is desolate, so begin to experiment with time travel to fix the past or create a new future they do this by using the main character, not named, as a vessel and try to send him back to a time in his past using his memories.



This story took a while to grasp, as it was forced onto the audience quite quickly, though as it is only a short film, at about 30 minutes, the story telling has to be quick and contain a lot of information. The film was very unique in terms of it's production and style. The entire piece consisted of black and white photographs to tell the story, all in quick succession and with full narration. The film is, more of a illustrated narration, with a very strong male voice lead. The story's 'twist' ending I really enjoyed, which was a explanation of why the man's memory of the 'Jetee' or the pier was so strong, that he was remembering his own death, which hadn't happened yet.



I think I enjoyed this film quite a bit because it reminded me of early Sci-Fi, like HG Wells with a bizarre time-travel plot, the male narration was also very similar to War of the Worlds recording. There were also a few scenes which had some strange un-sensible muttering in the background, this added a very strange and eery feeling to the film, along with the strong creepy images.

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I'm a student studying CG Arts and Animation at the University for the Creative Arts, I'm living in Kent.

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