La Jete

Chris Marker, 1962

La Jete, 1962 is a story told through series of pictures or

photo-roman, by Chris Marker. A picture is worth a
thousand words , but in this case a whole mysterious story,
about a prisoner chosen to be the test subject of mad
scientists research, told via black-and-white still images. One
of the best of all SF films is this haunting, apocalyptic 27minute French short by the great Chris Marker (1962) ,
Rosenbaum, 2007.
The story is quite confusing, but very interesting presented.
Its a post-apocalyptic story about a science experiment held
on prisoners. Implying that if something happens to them, its
alright, because most of them are sentenced to death,
therefore assumed that nobody would miss them. This is
rather cruel, but in a way it makes sense. It gives The Scientist
(Jacques Ledoux) the proper Mad Scientist look. A man
willing to sacrifice others in the name of an idea, experiment
that he must carry out.
Fig. 1

The main character The Man (Davos Hanich) is a prisoner. The

next test subject for experiment. The idea is that this man is sent
back in time before the World War III and sent in the future to
save the present. In the past he keeps on meeting with a woman
(Hlne Chatelain) that seems to be part of a memory from his
childhood. Eventually he falls in love with her, wanting to go back
in time to see her again. However when he goes into the future
he sees three human figures that have evolved to the point of
acquiring a third eye, telling him they have been waiting for him.

Fig. 2

La Jete may be at once the simplest and most complicated of time-travel movies because although the plot is
deceptively simple, Chris Marker doesnt get mired in the complicated science of how time travel might work.
Melin, 2012. Although for the time the film was created, the idea of time-travel would seem too impossible or
rather something that may happen only after so many years when the human kind has reached its intellectual
peak, the fact that any logic at all of how the time-travel happens is givem, for some reason doesnt make the
audience question it. The film looks like its a story is based on real-life events, which is not easy to achieve.
The only fictional work of experimental filmmaker and documentary-maker Marker, this is an elegantly
constructed riddle, with a punchline that is as satisfying as it is chilling for Film4, 2007. The overall feeling that
the film gives is achieved through the right sound effect, at the right moment and these somehow sad and
frightening black-and-white image stills. Also the fact that the only dialog heard is some distant mumbling also
brings this disturbing, mysterious and somehow feeling of isolation, where nobody will even know what truly
happened in this place or to this person.

Bibliography
Jonathan Rosenbaum, 2007, ChicagoReader.com URL: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/lajetee/Film?oid=1061951 accessed on 07/01/2016

Film4, 2007, FILM4 URL: http://www.film4.com/reviews/1962/la-jet-amp-233-e accessed on 07/01/2016

Eric Melin, 2012, Scene-Stealers, URL: http://www.scene-stealers.com/columns/overlooked-movie-monday/lajetee-sans-soliel-blu-ray-review/ accessed on 07/01/2016
IMDb http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056119/?ref_=nv_sr_1 accessed on 07/01/2016

Illustrations
Fig. 1, Poster https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/La_Jetee_Poster.jpg accessed on 07/01/2016
Fig. 2, Still image https://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-production/stills/363817f9fe315ecf2a7fea2c96036271f6ba/P_original.jpg accessed on 07/01/2016