Word: marienbad
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...moment is stunning, and if the picture as a whole is rather less impressive it is nevertheless a fine little film. Director Henri Colpi, a 40-year-old film editor (Last Year at Marienbad) who had never before made a feature picture, has started strong. The Long Absence is notable for modesty, sincerity, genuine warmth. It is never impelled to seem larger than life; it is never felt to be less than human...
...Last year at Marienbad" operates by suggestion, confronting the viewer with a series of images that force him to refer to his own experience. Thus the film takes on a distinct and unique meaning for each individual viewer...
Philosophically, Marienbad raises only cocktail questions. Nor has Resnais experimented with his medium, for he takes no real risks. On the basis of Hiroshima Mon Amour, interestingly enough, he was virtually assured of wide critical attention and box-office interest. A true risk, artistic or otherwise, never really takes the form of a publicity stunt...
...known only as "A" and "X" (Delphine Seyrig and Giorgio Albertzzi) and a second man, who is probably A's husband, but is identified simply as "M" (Sacha Pitoeff). For ninety-nine minutes, X tries to convince A that they had an affair last year at Marienbad in a plush resort hotel, but A can't seem to remember. Again and again, X corners A in the salons or the Versailles-like garden of the hotel where they are now staying (and also stayed a year before, says X) and retells some part of their supposed meetings of a year...
Just as there can be no correct answer which will leave the total experience unmarried for A and X, so too, Last Year at Marienbad will suffer no explanation without suffering destruction. It creates an artificial world of enigma, a closed world that could exist in no form other than the fluid, puzzling...