La Jetée: Ciné-Roman
Chris Marker
Zone Books, 1992

Hardcover | 9-1/2 x 7-1/2 inches | 258 pages | 290 illustrations | English/French | ISBN: 978-0942299663 | $39.95

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:
La Jetée is the book version of the legendary 1964 science fiction film about time and memory after a nuclear apocalypse. Chris Marker, the undisputed master of the filmic essay, composed the film almost entirely of still photographs.
It traces a desperate experiment by the few remaining survivors of World War III to recover and change the past, and gain access to the future, through the action of memory. A man is chosen for his unique quality of having retained a single clear image from prewar days: no more than an ambiguous memory fragment from childhood ? a visit to the jetty at Orly airport, the troubling glance of an unknown woman, the crumpling body of a dying man. Chris Marker is a filmmaker, photographer, traveler, and he likes cats.
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dDAB COMMENTARY:
The first time I watched La Jetée, Chris Marker's classic 1964 sci-fi film, was about 20 years ago at Facets in Chicago, when it was on a double-bill with Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville. Much more than Godard's film, Marker's half-hour film has stuck with me ever since. La Jetée, which was co-opted by Terry Gilliam for 12 Monkeys, tells the story of a man from the future ? when people live underground due to radioactive devastation on the surface ? who travels through time to ...