Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is one of the most important filmmakers alive, yet for some reason film history has a hard time giving his idiosyncratic genius the recognition it deserves. It is no coincidence that the 85-year-old filmmaker's nickname is "The Sphinx": the frequently paradoxical dimensions of his marvellous creations correspond to the playful and puzzling restraint of their creator. Although his unique films clearly show the signature of a strong auteur, Resnais calls them "commissioned works" and emphasizes the aspects of their craftsmanship. In his films, delight in experimentation and refined artificiality are amazingly connected to the traditions and joys of entertainment movies – from Silent Cinema to the major Hollywood musicals of the studio era.
It fits perfectly with the mystery surrounding Resnais that his early and most famous films – Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and Last Year at Marienbad (1961) – are familiar classics, but at the same time are not exactly "typical" for the director's complete work. Despite several Resnais characteristics, they seem, viewed from a retrospective angle, more like points of intersection with the fascinating oeuvres of his respective writing partners Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet. Both films are key works in the rise of cinematic modernism around 1960. They also function as cornerstones of the "Rive Gauche" movement which is often lumped together with the Nouvelle Vague, in a gross over-simplification (due to the proximity in both time and place). After the shows devoted to Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy and Chris Marker in 2006 and 2007, the Film Museum now presents the fourth central figure of the "Rive Gauche" with this first Austrian Retrospective of Alain Resnais' Complete Works.
The director’s early films already contain elements which are characteristic for the Left-Bank movement in general: progressive politics, a certain aesthetical playfulness, the close ties to modern literature, the fascinating combination of fictional and documentary forms. After a few "private" short films and assistant jobs, Resnais’ official filmography starts with films about other artists, such as Van Gogh (1948) and Guernica (1950). The essayistic masterpieces that follow, such as the ground-breaking reflection on the Holocaust, Night and Fog (1955), make his enduring themes clearly visible: remembrance and death, desire and loss. The same goes for his formal interests: the hypnotic tracking shots through the "cerebral architecture" of the French National Library in Toute la mémoire du monde (1956) point ahead to the exquisitely choreographed leaps through time and space in the castle of longing in Marienbad or in the science fiction cosmos of Je t'aime, je t'aime (1968).
The stylistic perfection and innovative force of his first two features are joined by a strong political awareness in Resnais' entirely personal monument Muriel (1963) which was to have a far-reaching influence on many of his later films – among them a study on the revolutionary conscience (La Guerre est finie, 1966), the Ciné-tracts of May 1968, or the biography of a counterfeiter, Stavisky (1974) with Jean-Paul Belmondo. In the brilliant construction of Muriel, the burden of memory (of the Algerian War) is reflected onto the characters. This virtuoso interplay of form and figures is typical for Resnais, yet he always adapts his specific style to each new project. He has continued to give himself new challenges (as in the analytical double feature Smoking/No Smoking, 1993, based on two Alan Ayckbourn plays), and blithely pursued his own private interests ranging from pop to high culture, from the satirical fusion of tragicomedy and science film (in his masterpiece Mon oncle d'Amerique, 1980) to the filmic investigation of supposedly "antiquated" stage art (Mélo, 1986), and the intercontinental comic-book-masquerade I Want to Go Home (1989); all in all, the spectrum of a deceptively gentle Surrealist.
In his most recent, artfully composed films On connaît la chanson (a pop musical), Pas sur la bouche (a frenetic operetta farce) and Private Fears in Public Places (an amorous round dance), the false bottoms are particularly noticeable. These are deeply personal meditations, perfectly "disguised" as entertainment pieces. They reveal to us the emotional core of Alain Resnais' work: a cinema of love and music, with a tinge of darkness.
The Retrospective takes place with the support of the Institut Français de Vienne and the French Foreign Ministry.
