La jetée (1962)

Director:

Chris Marker

Writer:

Chris Marker (screenplay)

Release Date:

16 February 1962 (France)

Genre:

Short | Drama | Romance | Sci-Fi

Plot:

In a devastated Paris in the aftermath of WWIII, The few surviving humans begin researching time travel...

Plot Keywords:

Childhood | Memory | Time Travel | Childhood Memory | Loss

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Jean Négroni	...	Narrator (voice)
Hélène Chatelain	...	The Woman
Davos Hanich	...	The Man
Jacques Ledoux	...	The Experimenter
André Heinrich
Jacques Branchu
Pierre Joffroy
Étienne Becker
Philbert von Lifchitz
Ligia Branice	...	A woman from the future (as Ligia Borowczyk)
Janine Klein	...	A woman from the future
William Klein	...	A man from the future (as Bill Klein)
Germano Facetti		(as Germano Faccetti)

Also Known As:

The Pier (International: English title)
De loopbrug (Belgium: Flemish title) [un]
Filar (Poland) [pl]
La Jetèe - terassi (Finland) [fi]
La jetée (Argentina) (festival title) [es]
La jetée (Brazil) [pt]
Stathmos apohairetismou (Greece) [el]
Terrassen (Sweden) [sv]

Runtime:

28 min

Country:

France

Language:

French | German

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Singapore:PG | Argentina:Unrated | Finland:K-8 | UK:PG

Filming Locations:

Orly Airport, Orly, Val-de-Marne, France

Company:

Argos Films

Trivia:

Comprised entirely of still shot photography, except for a shot of the woman opening and blinking her eyes.

Quotes:

[last lines]
Narrator: He ran toward her. And when he recognized the man who'd trailed him from the camp, he realized there was no escape out of time, and that that moment he'd been granted to see as a child, and that had obsessed him forever after... was the moment of his own death.

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in La Puppe (2003)

Two viewings 30 years apart

I first saw "La Jetee" in an introductory journalism class in the spring of 1973. The class was large, so large, in fact, that it was held in an auditorium rather than a conventional classroom. But when the film ended, there was about 30 seconds of stone-silence before the murmuring began. I sat slack-jawed and stunned and looked at Mary Ann, a girl who sat next to me and who I was slowly becoming friends with, to check her reaction. She looked equally stunned.

Thirty years have passed and I have occasionally revisited that moment. Despite wanting to know Mary Ann better, I was too timid and never saw her again after that semester ended and despite being stunned by the film, for some reason, I had lost track of its title. All I remembered was a haunting scene at an airport with a guy wearing glasses. That was it.

Just the other day and for no reason at all, I remembered the title "La Jetee" out of the blue. The name just popped into my head. And, even stranger, when I was checking the TV listings earlier today, I found that "La Jetee" was being shown on the Sundance Channel later.

I just finished watching it and I am as slack-jawed and stunned as I was thirty years ago. I guess the next logical thing will be to hear from Mary Ann. Just so long as I don't have to meet her at the airport.