Last Year at Marienbad

“Once again I walk, once again, along these corridors, across these salons, these galleries, in this edifice from another century, this huge, luxurious, baroque hotel.” The incantatory voice-over narration could be the voice of Sacha Vierny’s camera as it travels through time, past the statues and statuesque beings-in-time—the characters—in this masterpiece of mise-en-scène. A man attempts to convince a woman (Delphine Seyrig) that, a year ago, they met and fell in love at a European spa. The score by Francis Seyrig, a composition student of Olivier Messiaen, is almost entirely played by solo pipe organ.