[Note: Some number of previous Feature Friday films—7/20, I think—have since disappeared from YouTube. Such is the nature of gray market broadband video. So if you want to watch the films I link to, you'd better act fast, because better than 1/3 of them probably won't stick around. It's like Netflix Streaming! Meanwhile, I'll look around for replacement videos...]
If nothing else, watch the first minute of this one, one of the most beautiful opening minutes in all of cinema.
I came across Sans soleil after a college professor showed me La Jetée (1962). This was not long after Twelve Monkeys (1995) came out. Terry Gilliam was then my favorite director, and my very first piece of film criticism was a problematic materialist reading of La Jetée and Twelve Monkeys. I like to think today that Marker would smile and forgive me.
In 2007, Criterion Collection released La Jetée and Sans soleil together. Like with Stop Making Sense, I sometimes play them in the background while I work. I never get tired of watching or listening to either, especially Sans soleil. Alexandra Stewart‘s voice is Melancholy Incarnate.
Sans soleil (1983)
Written and directed by Chris Marker
Enjoy!
[...] Sans soleil (1983) [...]
[...] was 91. He passed away on his birthday, a Markerish thing to do. He made La Jetée and Sans soleil; he also made Le tombeau d’Alexandre (The Last Bolshevik), which has one of the greatest [...]
[...] Love Letter is much simpler in comparison, though still audaciously intricate. A woman who’s just buried her fiance writes him a final love letter, then receives a reply. No, it’s not a ghost movie, although it teases us for a while that it might be. The woman continues the correspondence, leading to the telling of a fairly complex story within the main story. It’s kinda like … if Jacques Rivette adapted Nick Bantock’s Griffin and Sabine Trilogy? (Also somewhat related: Lovers of the Arctic Circle, and Sans soleil.) [...]
[...] Sans soleil (1983) [...]