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.
