Directed by Chris Marker
“...he understood there was no way to escape Time, and that this moment he had been granted to watch as a child, which had never ceased to obsess him, was the moment of his own death.”
The name Chris Marker crossed my path within the last month. At the time, I did not investigate who he was but filed it away in the to-do-later brain pocket. Tonight, I was scrolling through Criterion Channel recommendations looking for a film to watch and in the “art house classics” section I came across La Jetée. I remembered the name Chris Marker so I decided to give it a whirl. I had no idea!
First off, I noticed that the opening image of the last film that I watched for this project, Stranger Than Paradise, is remarkably similar to this film. Go ahead and take a look at the image that I used on that post and compare it to the one on this post. It’s just too similar to be a mere coincidence. Perhaps also the lone woman in Jarmusch’s New York airport scene is a nod to the lone woman on the observation deck at Orly La Jetee?
Do a quick googling and you’ll learn that this film has been immensely inspirational to many filmmakers that followed – famously Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys. It is a film that was made in tribute to another great film, Hitchcock’s Vertigo. It’s no wonder then that as I watched, I kept thinking of my friend Bob White’s animated sci-fi films. In particular, his 1996 film Terri Lovenote that features a voiceover narration in a voice that sounds similar to the voices of the scientists in La Jetée. I texted Bob immediately to ask him about it. He confirmed his debts, adding that every semester for the past fifty years he has shown this film to his students at Simmons College. I may have to add it to my Intro to Photo class syllabus next semester.