Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		4.5
Overall		5.0

Last Year at Marienbad Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov August 21, 2019

Alain Resnais' "Last Year at Marienbad" (1961) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber. The supplemental features on the disc include a vintage trailer for the film; new video interview with second assistant director Volker Schlöndorff; new video essay by critic James Quandt; documentary on the making of the film; and more. The release also arrives with a 10-page illustrated booklet featuring an essay by critic Austin Collins and credits. In French, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".

The players

A chic European hotel. A man (Giorgo Albertazzi, The Merchant of Venice) meets a beautiful woman (Delphine Seyrig, Blood on the Lips) and the two begin talking. The man insists that he once had an affair with the woman. He tells her how they met at Marienbad, what they did and how they parted ways.

The woman is puzzled. She does not know the man and is certain that they have never met before. But the man seems to know a lot about her; much of what he utters is true. Who is he? Is it possible that they met, and she forgot about him? Is it possible that they had an affair? She does not believe the man and walks away.

The man follows the woman. He tells her more about their affair. He even explains how they agreed to meet a year after they parted ways. The man also mentions a shooting. Something bad, the man cannot recall exactly what happened. Does the woman remember? No, she does not.

In a secluded corner of the hotel, another man, who has been observing the woman from afar, lures its guests into a card game he insists they could never win. The game -- a series of cards displayed in a certain way are to be removed; the loser always gets the last card -- attracts many, but no one ever wins against the man.

Scripted by French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet (La Jalousie), Alain Resnais' L'Annee Derniere a Marienbad a.k.a. Last Year at Marienbad (1961) is the quintessential art film. It is perplexingly beautiful, impressively maddening, and impossible to fully deconstruct.

Last Year at Marienbad is also a bold exercise in form. Director Resnais intentionally emphasized form over narrative -- contrary to what the Nouvelle Vague promoted -- which confused immensely those who at the time had praised and embraced the fresh straightforwardness and elegant simplicity of Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959) and Jean-Luc Godard's Band of Outsiders (1964). As a result, Last Year at Marienbad effectively split audiences and critics into two groups, one immediately proclaiming that cinema had finally evolved into an art form, and another dismissing the film as a pretentious pseudo-intellectual drivel.

Both groups, however, agreed that Last Year at Marienbad conveyed impressive style. The chic looking hotel, its elegantly dressed guests, as well as the beautiful camerawork separated Last Year at Marienbad from practically every other film made at the time.

Last Year at Marienbad is composed of a number of different segments that belong to a larger story. It is practically impossible, however, to align them in a manner that successfully reveals the mystery surrounding He and She. At best, one could speculate about their relationship.

One of the more interesting segments from Last Year at Marienbad is focused on a card game. A man appears and announces that when he plays cards he never loses. Throughout the film, the man is seen observing She from afar, an act some have interpreted as a sign that he is somehow related to her. Others, however, have insisted that he represents something far more sinister.

This permanent sense of uncertainty is what makes Last Year at Marienbad a film impossible to forget. While viewing it, one is slowly immersed into a constant game of guessing with endless possibilities.

Last Year at Marienbad Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber.

The release is sourced from StudioCanal's recent 4K restoration of the film. Last year, the restoration was introduced on Blu-ray in a couple of different European markets. We reviewed StudioCanal's British Region-B release here.

I really do not have any new observations to add to my initial comments. I still think that Criterion's out-of-print release looks very strong, even by current standards. However, the new 4K restoration introduces small improvements that I think become very meaningful if you are viewing your films on a larger screen or project. Density levels, for instance, are stronger, and this is something that immediately impacts fluidity, which I consider a key quality. (If you use a 65-inch TV, or a bigger one, the improvement is pretty significant. If you project, the better density produces higher quality visuals that are impossible to ignore). Obviously, the grain is now finer and 'tighter', though on the Criterion release the grain is just as healthy. The new 4K restoration is also very carefully graded, so expect to see better balanced ranges of nuances, especially in darker areas, such as the hallways of the chateau. The overall image stability of the visuals is outstanding. Great restoration. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

Last Year at Marienbad Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: French DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Optional English subtitles are provided for the main feature. When turned on, they appear inside the image frame.

The audio is clean, stable, and free of balance issues. I don't know if any specific improvements were done when the new 4K restoration was prepared, but if there were any, I could not detect them. I think that the lossless track from Criterion's release is just as good.

Last Year at Marienbad Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview with Volker Schlondorff - in this brand new program, Volker Schlöndorff, who served as a second assistant director on Last Year at Marienbad, recalls how he was hired for the job (which apparently requited that he adheres to the communist views of Alain Resnais and his assistants), and discusses the film's ambiguous script, the overlapping of elusive events throughout the film, the shooting process and the director's working methods, etc. There are also some very interesting observations about the evolving nature of film making at the time. The interview was conducted exclusively for Kino Lorber in 2019. In English, not subtitled. (33 min).

• Last Year at Marienbad A to Z - in this new visual essay, James Quandt, programmer for the TIFF Cinematheque, examines the conception of Last Year at Marienbad and then attempts to solve a number of its enigmas. The essay was created exclusively for Kino Lorber in 2019. In English, not subtitled. (52 min, 1080p).

• Memories of Last Year at Marienbad - this documentary focuses on the production history of Last Year at Marienbad, and features an enormous amount of raw footage from the shooting of the film that was captured on 8mm stock. In German, with optional English subtitles. (49 min, 1080p).

• All the Memory of the World/Toute la memoire du monde (1956) - a poetic piece about the French national library in Paris and the archiving of memory that looks forward to Alain Resnais's later films Hiroshima mon amour and Last Year at Marienbad. In French, with English subtitles. (22 min, 1080p).

• Trailer - a vintage French trailer for Last Year at Marienbad. Remastered. In French, with imposed English subtitles. (4 min, 1080p).

• Additional Trailers - trailers for the following releases from Kino Lorber's catalog:
  
  1. Woman in Chains
  2. The Nun

• Commentary - an exclusive new audio commentary by critic Tim Lucas.

• Booklet - 10-page illustrated booklet featuring critic Austin Collins' essay "In Search of Lost Time: Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad" and credits.

Last Year at Marienbad Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

StudioCanal's recent 4K restoration of Alain Resnais' classic mind-bender Last Year at Marienbad is a beauty, and the only flaw that I can spot on this release is the absence of a 4K Blu-ray disc to go along with the Blu-ray disc. Regardless, the technical presentation is outstanding. Also, the release has another excellent exclusive new video interview with Volker Schlondorff, which was conducted at the same time he recorded The Demon Within Him piece for the new release of Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.