Film Forum

(1961) As ominous organ music resounds, the Scope camera tracks through the seemingly endless halls of a baroque grand hotel, as Giorgio Albertazzi tries to persuade an initially disbelieving Delphine Seyrig (in gowns by Chanel – Coco herself!) that they’d met the year before, even as the sepulchral Sacha Pitoëff hovers about. But as Albertazzi continues to repeat “Last year…,” each encounter takes place in different locations, in different costumes, the alterations not just coming from scene to scene but from shot to shot, amid actually mounting suspense, until the question becomes not only did it happen, but was it seduction or…? Perhaps the ultimate puzzle film, with dizzying time shifts and flashbacks, real or imagined. Oscar-nominated screenplay by nouveau roman titan Alain Robbe-Grillet. DCP restoration. Approx. 93 min.

Restored by Studiocanal, with the support of Centre National du Cinéma et de l’image animée and Chanel.

Presented with support from the George Fasel Memorial Fund for Classic French Cinema.

A RIALTO PICTURES RELEASE

LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD posters for sale at concession for special price of $25. Poster by Keiko Kimura.

Reviews

“One of the strangest artifacts of cinema history… no other film has affected fashion as deeply.”
– Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York

“A gorgeous puzzle box of a movie!”
– Mark Harris, The New York Times

“The movie is what it is – a sustained mood, an empty allegory, a choreographed moment outside time, and a shocking intimation of perfection.”
­– J. Hoberman

“Highly seductive… a masterpiece of masterpieces!”
– Jonathan Rosenbaum

“The Finnegans Wake of the movies! I can’t remember a film of more sustained visual delight.”
– Dwight MacDonald

“I was not prepared for the voluptuous quality of Marienbad, its command of tone and mood, its hypnotic way of drawing us into its puzzle, its austere visual beauty.”
– Roger Ebert