Overview

Chris Marker's La Jetée is 28 minutes long and almost entirely made up of black-and-white still images. Since its release in 1964, the film – which Marker described as a 'photo-novel' – has haunted generations of viewers and inspired writers, artists and film-makers. Its spiralling narrative of post-nuclear war time-travel narrative has influenced many other films, including the Terminator series and Terry Gilliam's Hollywood 'remake' Twelve Monkeys (1995). But as Marker rarely gave interviews, little is really known about the origins of La Jetée or the ideas behind it. In this groundbreaking study, Chris Darke draws on rare archival material, including previously unpublished correspondence and production documents, to examine the making of the film. He explores how Marker's only fiction film was influenced both by his early work as a writer and by Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), and considers how La Jetée's imagery can be seen to 'echo' throughout Marker's extraordinarily diverse oeuvre.

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9781844576425

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Reviews

Darke was a good choice to write this. ... his work to the book and puts La Jetee in context, both in terms of Marker, but also French cinema and culture of the time. He also brings a wealth of new information and insights that make this book a revelation, even to those of us who thought we had become familiar with the film. ... is an amazing piece of work that has stood the test of time ... . (Jon Davies, The Media Education Journal, Issue 61, 2017)

Author Information

Chris Darke is a Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Roehampton, UK, as well as a writer and film critic whose work has appeared in many magazines, including Sight & Sound, Film Comment and Cahiers du cinéma. He is also the author of several books, including Light Readings: Film Criticism and Screen Arts (2000), and the co-curator of the major exhibition, Chris Marker: A Grin Without a Cat, at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 2014.

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