He wrote: I’m just back from Hokkaido, the Northern Island. Rich and hurried Japanese take the plane, others take the ferry: waiting, immobility, snatches of sleep. Curiously all of that makes me think of a past or future war: night trains, air raids, fallout shelters, small fragments of war enshrined in everyday life. He liked the fragility of those moments suspended in time. Those memories whose only function had been to leave behind nothing but memories. He wrote: I’ve been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me. On this trip I’ve tracked it with the relentlessness of a bounty hunter. At dawn, we’ll be in Tokyo.
He used to write me from Africa. He contrasted African time to European time, and also to Asian time. He said that in the 19th century mankind had come to terms with space, and that the great question of the 20th was the coexistence of different concepts of time.
By the way, did you know that there are emus in the Île de France?
He wrote me that in the Bijagós Islands it’s the young girls who choose their fiancées….
Notice how much more darting about the narrative is, compared to the earlier film. It’s as if Marker deliberately wants to suffuse the viewer with images. Yet, everything mentioned in this opening has import. And, Marker shows great bravado from the opening seconds, for when he announces, ‘one day I’ll have to put it all alone at the beginning of a film with a long piece of black leader; if they don’t see happiness in the picture, at least they’ll see the black,’ that’s exactly what the viewer sees: blackness. The film then speeds up, at the end, with quicker imagery bombarding the screen, as the narrative pace picks up.
Here it ends, as La Jetee did, by cutting off the viewer’s expectation; but not emotionally, as in the earlier film, but by the literal pacing of the film, that then drops everything:
I took the measure of the unbearable vanity of the West, that has never ceased to privilege being over non-being, what is spoken to what is left unsaid. I walked alongside the little stalls of clothing dealers. I heard in the distance Mr. Akao’s voice reverberating from the loudspeakers... a half tone higher.
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."
6 - Christina
Anybody who would judge all of a country's cinema based on disliking some particular movie or director from that country lacks credibility as a reviewer. Those "filmic failures" you mention are actually considered renowned classic filmmakers, and its fine if you don't like them (you are obliged to dislike anyone you please) but stop trying to rewrite history with your shallow denunciations.