This is the story of a man, marked by an image from his childhood. The violent scene that upsets him, and whose meaning he was to grasp only years later, happened on the main jetty at Orly, the Paris airport, sometime before the outbreak of World War III.
Orly. Sunday. Parents used to take their children there to watch the departing planes.
On this particular Sunday, the child whose story we are telling was bound to remember the frozen sun, the setting at the end of the jetty, and a woman’s face.
Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. Later on they do claim remembrance when they show their scars. That face he had seen was to be the only peacetime image to survive the war. Had he really seen it? Or had he invented that tender moment to prop up the madness to come?
The sudden roar, the woman’s gesture, the crumpling body, and the cries of the crowd on the jetty blurred by fear.
Later, he knew he had seen a man die.
And sometime after came the destruction of Paris.
Many died. Some believed themselves to be victors. Others were taken prisoner. The survivors settled beneath Chaillot, in an underground network of galleries.
Above ground, Paris, as most of the world, was uninhabitable, riddled with radioactivity.
The victors stood guard over an empire of rats.
The prisoners were subjected to experiments, apparently of great concern to those who conducted them.
The outcome was a disappointment for some- death for others- and for others yet, madness.
One day they came to select a new guinea pig from among the prisoners.
He was the man whose story we are telling.
He was frightened….
The narration then goes into greater detail of the tale I just elucidated. Here is the end narration of the film:
And deep in this limbo, he received a message from the people of the world to come. They too traveled through Time, and more easily. Now they were there, ready to accept him as one of their own. But he had a different request: rather than this pacified future, he wanted to be returned to the world of his childhood, and to this woman who was perhaps waiting for him.
Article comments
1 - Dave
Of course it is inconceivable to Mr. Schneider that the film may be about BOTH memory and perception.
But of course, then he wouldn't have anything to act smug and superior about whilst talking about other critics.
2 - io
couldnt agree more with the previous comment. the films are about both memory and perception.
from the moment i read him stating that vertigo is an overrated movie i knew i couldnt take him seriously.
3 - Outofyourmind
Quoting: "one can understand why I was never particularly moved to engage the films of this man; especially considering that he was French, from that nation that launched the careers of such notable filmic failures as Jean Cocteau and Jean-Luc Godard."
So you would never have watched French cinema because of a whole 2 French directors being failures? Surely that's not very constructive discrimination? That would mean that you wouldn't watch any American cinema on the grounds of how much junk they put out every week? I think American cinema is great, don't you agree?
Cocteau a failure? Please develop... compared to what? Compared to "Terminator" in terms of box office numbers (since you mentioned Terminator in your critic)? What makes you say such a gratuitous, ignorant thing? The guy invented more than most can today with more technology and everyone at the time looked at him as the way forward for the new cinema... Get your head out of your brainwashed box, forget what you learned in the all-good-thinking schools and cinema academies (what's that suppose to mean anyway?) and embrace!
4 - El Bicho
Here's one that doesn't understand that reasoning
5 - what?
Film, after all, is a medium founded and nurtured by the written word. Without a good screenplay, a film is just shadows on a wall."