Truly Dreadful Film

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

At first, it doesn't seem like a non-documentary film composed entirely of still images and voice-over narration should work. Yet La Jetee not only succeeds, it overcomes its avant-garde background to become a great science fiction film that can appeal even to people who are not necessarily fans of experimental work.Chris Marker, who is in fact best known for his documentary work, has a remarkable eye for composition. All of the images that make up the are beautifully staged and composed. The lighting in particular is wonderful, the blacks and whites have a wonderful contrast with each other. The transitions also feel natural and the zooms and pans help give a sense of movement that avoids the risk of becoming monotonous. This makes you feel as though you're watching an actual moving picture as opposed to just a series of still images. The choral music throughout is also well used and gives the images a haunting atmosphere.In addition to looking fantastic and keeping the viewer's interest, the film also has many profound themes regarding time and memory. The main premise of the film is that a shadowy organization in a post-World War III world are trying to send prisoners back in time in order to save the future. In actuality, they are training them s they can send the prisoners to the future so thy can bring back advanced technology before disposing of them. Such a premise lends itself to many rich interpretations about the structure of society and the cost of human progress.The matter of the protagonist's relationship with a woman from the past also has a transcendent quality with its explorations of memory and its relationship with time and human desire. The fact that such a short film that, admittedly omits most of the details, is a sign of great film-making. The fact that there is so much to analyze about near0universal themes presented in an entertaining experimental fashion makes La Jetee a film that film buffs should seek out.

This is a haunting 28 minutes. The world has just been through World War III and nuclear weapons have doomed everyone. This takes place in Paris and the city is rubble. Winners and losers (actually all losers) are living underground. The scientists are using the others as Guinea pigs to try to figure out a way to travel back in time and correct the mistakes. One young man is a prime choice to do the job. As his memory is probed he goes back to a moment on a pier (La Jetee) where he tried to see a woman with whom he had fallen in love. He creates a narrative in his mind. What it does is create a kind of loop that will probably prove unproductive. It's probably like the people that will be left after it is too late at some future time, especially if they were complicit in the destruction, desperately trying to come up with a last straw to grasp. What we have, however, is one more shot of cruelty toward the people already victimized. I hope I'm wrong, but I kind of see the whole climate thing and the ozone layer being our World War III. That aside, this picture shows us some of the beauty that was there before the arrogance of some would eventuate our demise and with it the love and kindness that is really what the human condition should be about. I haven't even mentioned how incredibly creative this film is, using black and white still photographs to tell the story. Images of joy and pain and resilience.

What can I say? Its the best. Consisting mainly of stills. With one simple motion of the eyes from a solitary woman the woman of his dreams... reality. Science fiction, romance, whatever... its the best. From Sight and Sound: "We've saved the shortest and sweetest for last. Not only does Chris Marker's twenty-eight-minute La Jetée have the briefest running time of any film in the Sight & Sound top fifty, it's also certainly the only one made up almost exclusively of still photographs. Yet so much emotional and visual power is packed into Marker's singular work of postapocalyptic science fiction that its inclusion on a list like this is compulsory. The eerily beautiful time-travel tale is set in the tunnels under Paris after a third World War has ravaged the city, though it occasionally flashes back to a brighter past, where a government guinea pig is sent to collect data that might help save the world. Once there, the man, already obsessed with an obscure, romantic memory from his personal past—of a mystery woman watching him from an airport jetty—discovers his own tragic fate."

Straight out of the twilight zone era of the early-'60s when the world came it closest (many times, as it turns out) to apocalyptic destruction, and so many Hollywood thrillers -- both highbrow and down-market -- enjoyed a mournful creepiness that just worked, came this French short, only 28 minutes long, about a post-WW3 earth in which scientific experiments underneath the catacombs of Paris are being conducted into human memory in order to access it in some way to achieve contact of a kind with the future.Comprised only of frozen freeze frames -- except for one brief, subtle yet heart-stopping moment -- LA JETEE offers up some of the most haunting cinema ever captured. With the museum sequence its timeless centerpiece.The music score, the imagery, the face of eternity that was the '60s.It must be said, however, that the original version of LA JETEE with french narration (and English subtitles) is the way to go. In recent years, however, a new version with English narration has circulated -- the problem being that the new narration is done very poorly, taking the picture out of the correct place and time somehow... This new version was probably done to make the film "more accessible" but does so to obtain a mainstream audience LA JETEE is never going to get anyway.LA JETEE is a classic must-see....But, as is the case with anything -- or anyone -- who is truly special, the regiment out their who hate it are deeply committed to their hatred of it. And such is the case with LA JETEE.