On March 1, Alain Resnais passed away in Paris at the age of 91, and the world has lost one of its greatest filmmakers. With a career spanning over six decades, the revered French auteur had links to the French New Wave film directors and the Rive Gauche, or Left Bank movement, which includes writers and filmmakers such as Chris Marker, Agnes Varda, Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Even on his deathbed, the director was reportedly working on a new project based on English playwright Alan Ayckbourn’s 2013 Arrivals & Departures.
Local cinephiles will find some comfort in the director’s passing with the mini Resnais retrospective currently showing at Spot — Taipei Film House (光點—台北之家), which features five feature-length films and four shorts. Curated by film scholar and critic Ryan Cheng (鄭秉泓) for the Kaohsiung Film Archive (高雄市電影館), the festival has traveled north to Taipei, where it remains until Thursday.
Photo courtesy of Spot — Taipei Film House
Anyone familiar with Resnais’ oeuvre will tell newcomers that he is an artist who makes great demands on his viewers. Last Year at Marienbad (1961), which is based on novelist Robbe-Grillet’s avant-garde narrative, adopts an unconventional formal structure to deal with the abstract notions of consciousness, memory and imagination. The narrative is fragmented and ever-shifting, and revolves around one woman and two men wandering in an opulent setting of a fashionable European spa, constantly questioning, asserting and contradicting the possibility of an encounter the previous year.
For those intimidated by the director’s reputation, Cheng recommends they start with Coeurs (2006), Resnais’ second adaptation of Ayckbourn’s play that tells of six characters and their relationships. Cheng says the film is representative of the French auteur’s shift of interest in using theater as a basis for his film from the 1980s onwards. While the recurring themes of troubled memory and trauma remain, Resnais moves progressively away from narrative experimentation towards films that are more personal and focused on individuals and their emotions.
Cheng recommends Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) for the more seasoned Resnais’ buff. As part of the Rive Gauche group of artists distinguished by their identification with the political left, Resnais is known for tackling political themes in his films of the 1950s and 1960s. In Hiroshima Mon Amour, the incomprehensible suffering of those living in that city after it was incinerated by atomic bombs and the impossibility of speaking about the enormity of the horror, are acknowledged through a fusion of fiction and documentary to portray a brief, amorous affair between a French actress and a Japanese architect.
Photo courtesy of Spot — Taipei Film House
Resnais returns to the subject of suppressed historical trauma with Muriel (1963), when France remained divided by the Algerian War. The work is credited as among the first French films to speak of the Algerian experience. It relates the story of an antiques dealer and her stepson during his military service in Algeria, and how they are tormented by the memory of a girl tortured to death.
In 1967, Resnais and six other directors — including Varda, Marker and Jean-Luc Godard — collaborated on Far from Vietnam (1967), a film that dwells on the tragedy of war.
The festival also contains several shorts, including Night and Fog (1955), which is regarded as one of the most important cinematic works to address the Holocaust.
Photo courtesy of Spot — Taipei Film House
All films, except for Contre l’oubli, are shown in 35mm format. For the screening schedule, go to Spot’s Web site at www.spot.org.tw.
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