Time and Memory: a Consideration of the Themes of Time and Memory in La Jetée and L?année Dernière À Marienbad

This essay considers the work of two French New Wave auteurs, Chris Marker and Alain Resnais. It focuses on a discussion of Marker?s film La Jetée (1962) and Resnais? L?Année Dernière à Marienbad (1961) and makes a comparative analysis of the ways in which these films take the theme of Time and the processes of memory as the subject of the films themselves. Both films reject established ?découpage classique? model of Hollywood film construction in favour of an understanding of time which is free to skip parts, loop and repeat sections, to make jump cuts and transcend time. Time is understood, in Bergson?s terms, as ?multidirectional, in which past, present and future time are fused and continuous.? As Resnais has said: ?If cinema is not a method of juggling specifically with time, [it is] in any event the method of which it is best adapted to...?