He is perhaps best known for the poetic imagery in his masterpiece, Last Year at Marienbad (1961). It is a quintessential art house film, famously slow in pace, that leaves indelible snapshots of exquisite design in one's imagination. The garden scene (below) is the film's most iconic image, and is itself a work of modern art-in-motion. The film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1961. Synopsis from Criterion:
"Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais’ epochal Last Year at Marienbad (L’année dernière à Marienbad) has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. Written by radical master of the New Novel Alain Robbe-Grillet, this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in telling its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-filled château they now find themselves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings, diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais’ investigation into the nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story." Essay about the film at Criterion here.
Resnais continues to make movies, including a recent feature with Audrey Tautou (Amelie), called Not on the Lips (2003). His new product is current in post-production. More about Resnais at the Museum of the Moving Image here. Movie posters available at Movie Goods here.
