Chris Marker: Memories of the Future
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Review
a gentle, firm, lucid tracking-down of the greatest ever movie essayist ... There could not be a better introduction -- David Thomson The Week sedulously researched and engaging ... a thoroughly necessary guide' Modern Painters 'Her prose is refreshlingly jargon-free ... Lupton draws thematic connections between isolated moments in Marker's films with an ease born of deep familiarity, and her film analyses are lucid and interesting ... the first complete English-language survey of Marker's work is an invaluble reference Rain Taxi Lupton steers through the maze of Marker's world with admirable clear-headedness Frieze Catherine Lupton's is the first complete study of Marker in English, and she has produced a succinct, comprehensive account of his work London Review of Books
Modern Painters
‘sedulously researched and engaging . . . a thoroughly necessary guide.’
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5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Magic Marker, 2 April 2006
By Kevin Killian - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Chris Marker: Memories of the Future (Paperback)
It's hard for a biographer to sink her teeth into an elusive figure like Chris Marker, for Marker is famous for not allowing himself to be interviewed, or even photographed, and when fans write to him asking for a signed photo, he sends back a picture of a cat, or sometimes an owl. He seems to see himself as an owl and made a great picture recently screened here in San Francisco called THE GRIN OF THE OWL. And by the way, Chris Marker isn't even his real name. And no one knows for sure if the legends about his early life are true. For example, people say he was the youngest member of the French Resistance. That would certainly be romantic if it were true. But what if his background wasn't exactly as "PC" as the myth?
Catherine Lupton explores all these quandaries and more in her new guide to Marker's life and work. Of course the work deserves the extended treatment that she gives it. His body of work is little known in the USA, for only a few of his films have gained purchase even in the "cinematheque" set, and if you tried something like Netflix I shudder to think what would turn up, they would probably send you Gilliam's TWELVE MONKEYS. Marker has a tortured relationship to his own films, and in recent years has taken on the extended project of re-working, re-editing, and re-presenting his earlier films in a new, gallery based context which is quite site-specific. It would probably be easy enough to catch a showing of LA JETEE, and here in San Francisco the later SANS SOLEIL has a lot of cult appeal, for its beautiful shots of our wonderful city are as dazzling as any Richard Lester captured in PETULIA. But the rest of the films are a terra incognita and we are lucky to have such a careful, scrupulous and intelligent commentator as Catherine Lupton to narrativize them o skillfully.
Of the ones she describes, I am looking forward most to seeing IF I HAD FOUR CAMELS and REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS TO COME (co-directed with Yannick Bellon). There is one sequence in LA JETEE, otherwise composed--like CAMELS and REMEMBRANCE--of still photos, held in frame for slightly varying lengths of time--in which a flash of movement rips through the film, and shakes the whole world of cinema to its foundation. It is like watching movies for the very first time. Marker is quite old now, I suppose, perhaps 85, so maybe he wasn't the YOUNGEST member of the Resistance, just the most legendary. He still sounds as though he has plenty of tricks left in his bag. As the years go by his experiments with texture and "truth" seem more and more relevant, so that as Fellini (for example) seems less and less interesting as an artist, the balance tips the other way in the direction of "nonfiction" and Chris Marker.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chris Marker: Memories of the Future, 28 Jun 2005
By Harlan D. Whatley "harlanw" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Chris Marker: Memories of the Future (Paperback)
Marker's extraordinary filmography includes Letter from Siberia (1958), La Jetee (1962), Sans Soleil (1982) and Level Five (1996). The works of this French, "techno-shaman" exceed the boundaries of conventional cinema, often by using only still photographs and music in a film. Marker's body of work is international in scope and includes the mediums of writing, photography, filmmaking, video, television and digital multimedia. The biographer, Catherine Lupton, is a Senior Lecturer in Film & Television Studies at Roehampton University in London. She describes Marker's odyssey from the late 1940s, when he began to work as a critic and writer for the French journal Esprit with Alain Resnais and other intelligentsia, to his most recent work, a multimedia CD-ROM called Immemory. Not much is known about Marker's life pre-World War II, other than he served as a parachutist with the U.S. Army and was involved with the French Resistance. Other oddities about Marker include his abstinence from being photographed, unless he is hidden behind a camera. Media requests for a picture of the auteur usually result in an image of a cat or an owl. Even his name is not real, as Chris Marker is one of several pseudonyms used by the 84-year old enigmatic filmmaker. Marker's relationship with Yves Montand and Simone Signoret is discussed in the book, as well as his fascination with the Russian kino-train director, Alexander Medvekin. In 1962, two of his films, the 29 minute La Jatee (the source for Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys) and the feature, Le Joli mai, are two of the major highlights in a long and experimental career of this modern-day master, whose films were created in France, Russia, China, Africa and the United States. Marker's life is nearly as obtuse as the hidden meanings in his works.
© 2005 Harlan D. Whatley
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