La Jetee

• Film Title: La Jetee
• Original Year of Production: 1962
• Studio: Unknown
• Director: Chris Marker
• Cast: Jean Negroni, Helene Chatelain, Davos Hanich
• Producers: Anatole Dauman

This black and white French film is one that stands out. The film is a series of still images that are narrated to provide a post-WWIII science fiction story that delves into love, time travel, and murder. In France, a captured soldier is taken prisoner and given drug and forced to travel in time. However, the soldier can only remember a traumatic event that occurred at the airport as a child.  He saw a man collapse and die and specifically remembered a beautiful woman’s face. In a weird yet beautiful series event the soldier is sedated and travels back forth in time to that enables him to establish a sporadic relationship with a beautiful woman. They have different outings at random places and times. In the poster above, you can see the object of his affection, one of their outings, and the experiments the soldier had undegone. After a series of meetings the scientists responsible for sending the soldier throughout time establish a mission to find a way to rebuilding his native lands. Upon completing his mission he was to be executed however he escapes by his comrades from the future. Upon being saved he requests to be brought to that moment in time as a child that was etched into his mind. Upon returning he saw the beautiful woman and ran towards her only to be assassinated by a research scientist. In his last moments, the soldier realizes that the image of the man dying at the airport that haunted him as a child was in fact him.

This thesis of this film can be hard to identify at first glance. The lack of historical background, dialogue, and character development leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Seeing how the film was shot in France during the tense political times of the Cold War and Vietnam, one can make the assumption that the political and military disputes of the time are represented in the films arguments. In the beginning of the film, the soldier as a boy sees a man assassinated only to find out that he was the very man who was to meet his death. France during this time was faced with the defeats and hardships of the first world wars and Vietnam. One could see draw parallels between the soldier and seeing his own death without realizing it and the ideas of nationalism. For example, France saw the ideas of Nazi nationalism during WWII fail and the results were dramatic for the Germans resulting in the splitting of Germany between two different ideologies and in the west and the east. Just as the boy witnessed the death of a man, the French witnessed the death of the Nazi’s. However, the soldier still fought and participated in activities such as war that bread chaos and death, just as France sent troops to Vietnam and parts of the Middle East.

The historical context of the film was in relation to the cold-war. During this time,”Europe was enmeshed in the cultural manifestations of the cold war just as it was drawn into cold war alliances that developed around the superpower rivalry.”(Smith, 414) Many people believed the world was soon to meet again in WWIII.  In the early 1960’s, the Soviets began building the Berlin wall in order to stop their citizens and others from entering or exiting. In addition, in 1962, “the CIA reported the installation of launching sites for Soviet medium-range missiles in Cuba, a counter to nuclear weapons aimed at the USSR that the United States had installed in Turkey.”(Smith, 417) The times were marked with fear and alienation by the Soviets, the Americans, and other countries caught in between. This was the backdrop for the film that expresses a strong anti-war message for the reasons of complete chaos and global amounts of deaths and suffering as the result of nuclear arms.

The film has a unique style that adds to its apocalyptic message. The film is basically just a collection of various still images that in concert with music and narration come together and act similar to other major motion pictures. In an article critiquing La Jetee, Bruce Kawin discusses the different elements of the film that make it so unique. One such element is that of the use of stills. The jumps back and forth in between time, however, “our reality is not composed of stills; even the instant is a mental construct.”(Kawin, 17)  This powerful technique used by the director does not follow the traditional linear models of film. Another technical aspect of the film is the use of stasis images. Many images in film such as that of the stuffed animals in the museum, the statue of a cherub, and airport are examples of stasis imagery. According to Kawin, “all of the images are fixed and are calculated to give the impression of life while insisting on the fact that they are images, art, statues, the product of the interaction between life and the attention of the artist.”(Kawin, 18)  The director also uses strong mood setting narrations and music to illustrate different dramatic feelings. For example, the use to whispering narratives and strong classical music set the mood for the scene when the soldier is traveling into the future. It’s these elements that when analyzed reveal the true beauty and uniqueness of the film La Jetee.