(L’année dernière à 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. Some critics interpreted Marienbad’s labyrinthine gardens as a dreamscape, others as a landscape of the mind that rejects cause and effect. Still, why not take it at face value? A man attempts to convince a woman (Delphine Seyrig) that, a year ago, they met and fell in love at a European spa, perhaps Marienbad where they are now. Truth becomes a mazelike trap, persuasion a key to freedom.

—Judy Bloch

• Written by Alain Robbe-Grillet, based on his novel. Photographed by Sacha Vierny. With Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoeff, Françoise Bertin. (94 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, ’Scope, 35mm, From Rialto Pictures)