P4 Time-Image Research ProjectP4 THEATER · DELEUZE
Identification poster for Last Year at Marienbad
IMDb identification poster · for film identification only

Alain Resnais / 阿伦·雷乃 · 1961

Last Year at Marienbad

L’Année dernière à Marienbad

Bifocal structure: Robbe-Grillet organizes incompatible peaks of the present, while Resnais places characters in coexisting sheets of the past.

Film details

Original title
L’Année dernière à Marienbad
Director
Alain Resnais / 阿伦·雷乃
Year
1961
Region
France

Film analysis: how shots organize concepts

ATLAS MECHANISM BREAKDOWN

Repetition does not recover one determinate encounter; it gives 'already happened,' 'never happened,' and 'happening now' presents of their own.

  1. 01
    Architecture speaks before the event

    A voice repeatedly describes corridors, mirrors, ceilings, and silent guests as the camera glides through symmetrical space.

    Place no longer locates a past event; it becomes a machine that continually produces déjà vu.
  2. 02
    The encounter forks into versions

    When the same conversation returns in garden, bedroom, and bar, dress, posture, refusal, and consent keep changing.

    The differences cannot be assigned to one missing true timeline; versions coexist as incompossible presents.
  3. 03
    Departure cannot close the circuit

    Shooting, the hotel game, and the final departure appear as fact, hypothesis, or replay, with no level appointed as judge.

    Actual and virtual continue to exchange positions; the ending only extends the crystalline circuit.
Atlas analysis · evidence classification unrecorded.
The male and female statues in the garden in Last Year at Marienbad00:01:45
KEY SHOTLast Year at Marienbad00:01:33–00:01:54Displayed still: 00:01:45

The same statues carry two accounts: he says the man stops the woman; she says the woman is the one who first sees something.

VISIBLE

The image cuts from the woman in the garden to paired statues and then circles behind them.

At the anchor, the burned-in subtitle states that she had offered the reading in which the woman saw something.

AUDIBLE

A male voice first offers the reading that the man stops the woman, then recalls the other reading in which the woman sees something.

SITE ANALYSISThe film does not resolve the two readings into one recoverable past. The same visible object sustains two present versions, leaving the past in an incompossible relation to the present.

Cinema 2, chapter 5, English translation pp. 101, 106, 108; atlas shot analysis.Bilibili at 00:01:45 Open original still ↗Excerpt-upload timeline, frame-verified to within one second.

A continuous 2:57 original-film excerpt, not the complete feature; film identity, continuity, burned-in subtitles, and anonymous playback were frame-verified.

Bilibili continuous original-film excerpt · moimoichou · verified 2026-08-14
Reading attribution: Atlas editorial synthesis · Sources and locators

Close-reading questions

  1. 01
    Movements through corridors, gardens, and rooms place one encounter in incompatible presents. Which shots connect space while refusing to confirm the year in which it happened?
  2. 02
    The matchstick game repeats one rule while its winner and promise shift. How does the rule's stability produce forks among virtual pasts?
  3. 03
    The narrator's assertion, the woman's denial, and the man's insistence are never adjudicated as true or false. How does the film let three narrations occupy the present at once?

Shots and scenes

Read the complete film analysis: shot relations, temporal structure, and concepts

Primary texts, scholarship, and locators

Theory coordinate: Cinema 2, Minnesota 1989, ch. 5, pp. 101, 103–105, 122, 124

  1. 01
    Cinema 2: The Time-Image

    Authoritative source for the standard translation, translators, ISBN, and publication date.

    Open the atlas source record →
Consult the primary-text locator above.
Douban film searchsearch.douban.comBilibili film searchsearch.bilibili.com

This film in books and research

Photography, Cinema, Memory · Book case

Last Year at Marienbad

pp. 128–129

Film relation: Repeated poses, spaces, and conflicting memories bring viewpoint into an undecidable crystal.

Shot question: In the statue discussion, which present exchanges with which virtual past?

《缠绕的诗学：德勒兹思维方法研究》 · Atlas extension

Last Year at Marienbad

Film relation: Site extension: hotel space, repeated narration, and conflicting memories test whether one version can exhaust an event.

Shot question: In the statue discussion, which actual present exchanges with which virtual past?

The Neuro-Image · Book case

Last Year at Marienbad

pp. 127–146

Film relation: Conflicting narration, repeated poses, and architecture let analog cinema anticipate a database-like brain-screen.

Shot question: Are competing statue versions memory errors or several presents reorganizing the past?

Deleuze and Cinema: The Film Concepts · Book case

Last Year at Marienbad

pp. 144–146, 170–175

Film relation: Conflicting narratives, poses, and spaces keep actual and virtual exchanging places.

Shot question: Which shots cannot be assigned stably to present, memory, hypothesis, or lie?

Cinema After Deleuze · Book case

Last Year at Marienbad

pp. 97–100

Film relation: The versions of A, X, and M remain unassignable between peaks of present and sheets of past.

Shot question: Which real actions and affective consequences do unverifiable versions still produce?

Sheets of Past and Peaks of Present: How the Order of Time Enters the Image

The present as simultaneous divergence

Claim: Peaks of present allow several presents of one event to persist simultaneously; each works internally, while their conjunction is incompossible.

Conclusion: Mark each present of one event, its internal evidence, and conflicts among versions; simultaneity and incompossibility jointly establish peaks.

Cinema 2: The Time-Image · ch. 5, pp. 101, 103–105Gilles Deleuze's Time Machine · pp. 79–120

Sheets of Past and Peaks of Present: How the Order of Time Enters the Image

Temporal relation takes over image linkage

Claim: A chronosign appears when coexistence of sheets or simultaneity of peaks directly organizes shots.

Conclusion: Record version, temporal position, mode of evidence, and action-consequence; when temporal relation links shots directly, the order of time becomes an image principle.

Cinema 2: The Time-Image · ch. 5, pp. 116, 118, 120, 122–123Deleuze's Cinema Books · pp. 151–156

Time-image research chapters

How memory searches the past and the present forks

Bearing Time Chinese DOCX, paragraphs 274–448.

Claim: Sheets and peaks are two different chronosigns: recollection searches a virtually preserved past for a sheet, while peaks let incompossible presents each persist in its own right.

What to watch for: First ask whether recollection selects a sheet of the past. If no common past is available for search, ask which versions of the present each persist yet remain incompossible. Record the direction and failure of the search separately from the consequences of each version.

Viewing gateways and editions

  1. Official Bilibili feature page: 去年在马里昂巴德bilibili.comOpen film page ↗
    Page access
    Region restricted
    Version extent
    Recorded as a complete version
    Source type
    Distributor or streaming platform

    Edition note: Official Bilibili feature · 1:33:35; the page carries regional access restrictions.

    Link checked: 2026-08-25

    Report a broken linkRaise a rights query

  2. Criterion Collectioncriterion.comOpen film page ↗
    Source type
    Distributor or streaming platform

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Concepts, terms, and further reading

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