Chris Marker-Sans soleil (1982)

In Sans Soleil, as with La Jetée, director Chris Marker transports the viewer to a different cinematic dimension. An unknown woman reads the writings of a cameraman who travels the world to produce a study of 'the dreams of the human race'. He is particularly attracted to the two extremes of Japan and Africa, and discusses the images that he creates with the woman, ever mindful of the astonishing store of memory he has created. (-DVD cover)




"He wrote me...." A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0084628/plotsummary)




One of the most influential, radical science-fiction films ever made and a mind-bending free-form travelogue, La jetée (The Jetty) and Sans soleil (Sunless) couldn’t seem more different—yet they’re the twin pillars of one of the most daring and uncompromising careers in cinema history. Chris Marker, filmmaker, poet, novelist, photographer, editor, and now videographer and digital multimedia artist, has been challenging moviegoers, philosophers, and himself for years with his complex queries about time, memory, and the rapid advancement of life on this planet. These two films—a tale of time travel told in still images and a journey to Africa and Japan—remain his best-loved and most widely seen. (www.amazon.com)




On the surface, this remarkable 1982 filmed essay by the legendary Chris Marker--the French filmmaking pioneer whose extraordinary works about the properties of memory (including the 1962 La Jetée, remade by Terry Gilliam as 12 Monkeys) comprise a chapter of French New Wave history--appears to be a kind of travelogue. Using narration, documentary footage, photographs, and various sorts of mental meanderings, Marker constructs a cinematic parallel to the inherent adventures in journeying through different parts of the world. With great, self-effacing wit, Marker invokes that sense of broadened wisdom and vision that accompanies travel, as well as the delicate problem of trying to communicate the scale of that wisdom and vision to others. The delightful movie takes us to many fascinating sights in Tokyo, but what really develops is a dialogue with the audience about the nature of a filmmaker's pact with them, as well as the insecurity of trying to live up to that promise. A wonderful, clear-eyed experience, one that makes you wonder why Marker continues to be tagged with the obfuscating tag of "experimentalist." (www.amazon.com)




When is a documentary not a documentary? SANS SOLEIL is a film comprising 'real' images, narrated with 'real' observations. The subject-matter is Japan, post-modernism, the erasion of memory, the flattening-out of history, decentring, surface, pastiche. It records life-styles, trends, habits, rites, artistic movements with the rigour of an anthropologist. It is a film about travel: throughout the world, throughout time. It is science fiction (Terry Gilliam's TWELVE MONKEYS fleshes out an anecdote here). It is a Borgesian fantasy, (the filmmaker is actually a fictional creation , Sandor Krasna). To call it a documentary, or even a film, would be like calling the Sistine Chapel a ceiling. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0084628/usercomments)





The original language of this film is French. But my DVD is English version. So I apologize to French members of Avax for being posting the dubbed one. I included the English script copied from http://www.markertext.com/sans_soleil.htm (-FNB.47)








Links to previous movie posts:

From 1# to 170# please refer to page :
170 Michelangelo Antonioni-Identificazione di una donna (1982)

171 Erick Zonca-La Vie rêvée des anges (1998)
172 Miklós Jancsó-Még kér a nép ('Red Psalm') (1972)
173 F.W. Murnau-Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)
174 Werner Herzog-Nosferatu, Phantom der Nacht (1979)
175 Peter Greenaway-The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
176 Yasujiro Ozu-Tokyo monogatari ('Tokyo Story') (1953)
177 Abbas Kiarostami-Ta'm e guilass ('Taste of Cherry') (1997)
178 Bertrand Bonello-Le Pornographe (2001)
179 François Truffaut-L'Homme qui aimait les femmes (1977)
180 György Pálfi-Hukkle (2002)
181 Gillo Pontecorvo-La Battaglia di Algeri (1966)
182 Paolo e Vittorio Taviani-La Notte di San Lorenzo (1982)
183 Aleksandr Dovzhenko-Arsenal (1928)
184 Béla Tarr-Werckmeister harmóniák (2000)
185 Jean-Claude Lauzon - Léolo (1992)
186 Otar Iosseliani-Pastorali (1975)
187 Chris Marker-Sans soleil (1982)