Part 1: Brief Reference
| What did you like about the film? I liked the narrative. | What didn’t you like? The narration went on a bit in some parts |
| What ideas could you use? Narrative or style? I think If were to take influence it would be through the films style as I found that interesting. | What ideas won’t you use? Why? I would use narration for that long and perhaps use text instead. |
Part 2: In-Depth Study – Narrative
| Narrative Feature | Example | Your own example |
| Establishing protagonist – what information do we find out? How is it conveyed? | Introduced only in narration – first in third person as “a man marked by an image”; then in first person -memory of incident at the airport. We don’t see him until the first experiment is shown. This shows how core the act of remembering is to his identity – indeed we find out very little about him (he remains nameless) apart from his ‘remembering’ (even when he is travelling in time). | Introduced in a flashback of him as a younger boy, in a familiar environment to the real world unlike the dystopian elements of his world later shown, this establishes the significance of the location as when shown to later when he returns to it all the characters including himself as a younger boy are included creating an interesting narrative feature of a sort of time paradox. |
| Establishing other characters – what information do we find out? How is it conveyed? | The Woman is the first person we see (“the only image to survive the war”) – and she is defined only by the fact the narrator remembers her. Feminist critics may comment on the fact she barely seems to exist outside the experiences of the narrator and her growing belief in him. | ‘The Experimenter’ shown to look futuristic with peculiar glasses and a clandestine appearance, always lurking in shadow, is shown to be a dominant figure in the narrative despite not constantly being shown. By silent whispers of German coming from what we assume is him, it can create a stereotype that he is evil. |
| Establishing location (time and place) – what information do we find out? How is it conveyed? | We are told immediately that the location is Paris. The bombed out wreckage of the city (real WW2 images) don’t immediately establish that this is the future until the narrator mentions radiation. The underground location beneath the Palais de Chaillot is shown by intercut images of broken cherubs and other sculptures. | With scenes from the past, shown to be in modern day (In the 60’s) it is mentioned with accompanying footage of ww2 destruction photos that the cause of this was nuclear weapons. With the narrator mentioning that it was in the future and WW3 had occurred it is well established to the viewer that the events they are seeing are from a future war caused with unknown reasons. |
| Creating Enigmas – what are they? How are they created? | The image the narrator obsesses over is the central enigma: who is the man he witnesses dying? How does he die? Who is the woman? The still images and voiceover powerfully evoke the nature of memory. | What other questions are posed throughout the narrative? There isn’t context as to why France was nuked in a nuclear war, it isn’t established who is the enemy. |
| Narrative binary oppositions | The ‘Living Present’ vs Past/Future. As the film progresses, what constitutes the ‘present’ (for the protagonist) seems to shift from his dystopian subterranean society to the ‘past’ of pre-apocalypse Paris. This is conveyed by the faster rhythm of the montage and the sequence (18:00-18:49) where the images almost become like traditional cinema. | The good from bad in La Jette are shown with the figures from the past and future, people from the past (although still in the future) are secretive and experiment on their people below them trying to reach the further future. The Good are shown to be the people from further future and offer the man sanctuary in the bright future. |
| Crisis – how was this conveyed? | Is it the first experiment? The moment the man spots the woman from the airport? Or is it when the future society offers him the chance to escape to the future? | What do you think is the crisis point? How does this affect the rest of the narrative? The Crisis point is only when the man realizes the man he witness get killed was himself. |
| Resolution – is it closed or open narrative? | The narrative is closed – but it is also in a loop: the narrator is both the dying man and the child watching the scene. This ‘time paradox’ has inspired films as diverse as The Terminator and Looper (as well as 12 Monkeys which is almost a remake). | What do you think about the end? Is it closed – or endlessly circular? The film creates a paradox within its self where the actions in the film are bound to repeat themselves forever. |
Part 3: Meaning and Effect
| What did you think was the intention of the filmmaker(s)? Intellectual message? Emotional response? Everyone is trapped in their time – they cannot escape it, even through memory. It is also about concept of photography and cinema itself, trying to ‘freeze’ time with images despite time always being in motion. | How was this achieved? The use of photomontage separates each frame of the story into a frozen image – even though these are joined together using traditional narrative film techniques such as voiceover, dissolves, fades and music. As the man begins to ‘live’ more and more in the ‘past’ with his lover, the space between these frames speeds up to resemble ‘motion picture’ speed at one point. The stuffed animals in the museum are also ‘frozen’ in a single moment. Your own idea: By using the same locations, the film creates an identity to places where viewers know what will happen. In the future they know they will be safe, in the present they know it is not safe due to experimentation and in the past there is also a sense of safety until the realization that it is not. |
| Aesthetic binary oppositions The use of still photo images are combined with traditional narrative cinematic techniques that bring them ‘to life’… until the moment around 18:00 when they flow together. | Effect of these oppositions? Shows the intensity of emotion the narrator feels with his lover: like he is finally ‘living’ in moving time rather than a series of frozen, separated moments. Your example: Repetition of the photo used of him being experimented on and the photos of him exploring the past more, creates the effect to the viewer that this is all set in his mind. |