Muriel, ou le Temps d'un retour [Masters of Cinema] [DVD] [1963]

I have seen Muriel twice, first on the R1 DVD (Koch Lorber). This later Eureka/MoC R2 release differs by having better picture and a nice booklet. The colors and details are the same, but the aspect is correct on MoC, as the picture is slightly squeezed on the R1. (Also the subtitles on the R1 are yellow, which I find a little disturbing.)

The picture shows signs of age, it is not especially sharp and rather grainy. But the colors are vivid. Despite this I guess the quality of the transfer is as good as it can get (the R1 shows he same grain). And I watched it on a projector without any problems.

The Booklet contains two essays, the first (by B.Kite) is more theoretical and a little fluffy, and the other (by Anna Thorngate) sets the film in it's historical context and gives a more straightforward (and better) analysis. As a complement, I can recommend Richard Neuperts excellent book "A History of the French New Wave Cinema", where Muriel is analysed and set in the context of the 'new wave' and Alain Resnais other films.

Muriel, ou le Temps d'un retour came out 1963, shortly after the end of the algerian war. It takes place in Boulogne, a city which met a lot of destruction in WW2, and then rapidly modernized with big functionalist concrete buildings. Here Helene lives with her son Bernard, in an apartment where "everything is for sale" as Helene works as a antique dealer. They are visited by Alfonse, a lover of Helene since long ago. And Francoise, Alfonse's lover. The film then follows the characters during a period (we don't know for how long). Some themes of this complex film is memory, identity, and fragmentation (Helene's apartment is fragmented, as is the city and actually the relations of the characters and the characters themselves).

As both essays in the booklet point out, in Muriel Resnais doesn't take the subjective perspective of any of the characters, but rather a "collective point of view". (Thorngate). It's like the action and the characters are viewed through a mind that is zooming in and out and changing location all the time, maybe trying to get a grasp of it all. Sometimes in the film the camera jumps through the city (Boulogne), watches something else (objects, a building) while the characters talk, and sometimes we are shown a sequence of rapid and seemingly random cuts of what is happening to the characters on different locations. Like someone playing fast forward and skipping through chapters of a DVD. Interesting is how when Bernard shows his film from the war, the tempo slows down. Maybe this is the heart of the film. Also, different to Resnais other films Marienbad and Hiroshima, there are no actual flashbacks in time (but maybe some fast-forwarding?).

Well, this is a complex film with a rich content and a special form that can be seen several times. It's better to see it than read about it. But Muriel is no "easy" film with a clear narrative where everything is explained. If you like french cinema, or like the other films by Resnais, you will probably enjoy this.

All in all, that MoC have released Muriel, an important piece of cinema and part of the french new wave, on a high quality R2 DVD with a nice booklet is reason to buy. It would have been nice to have some more extra material, some interview with Resnais or commentary, but you can't get everything. Highly recommended to anyone interested in cinema!

This film situates the often complex,.absract strains Of Resnais in a more urban post-war environment.Through the use of jarring jump cuts and frenetic montage sequences he renders what is banal,ordinary in these character's lives as extraordinary through visual cubism.We are dealing with memory,its vagaries, its changes in the lives of the 2 main characters,Helene and Bernard,her step-son.The trauma of the 2nd World War and the Algerian War in terms of their experiences intrude in and distort their present existence.they with a 3rd character,Alphonse one of her old loves whom she invites to stay,try to relive or alter that past.Helene and Bernard are living in the past,she through fantasy and he very much through demons,an atrocity he helped commit in the Algerian War against Muriel,the Algerian woman of the title.Boulogne is a perfect location for rebuilding a dislocated past.This film has an amazing pace as Resnais explores time to examine past experiences and their effect on the present.

French avant-garde and former French New Wave director Alain Resnais` third feature film which proceeded his highly acclaimed first feature film "Hiroshima Mon Amour" (1959) and "Last Year at Marienbad" (1961), was written for the screen by French poet Jean Cayrol (1911-2005) and tells the story of middle-aged antique dealer Hèlène Aughain who lives in her inner-city appartment in the provincial port-town of Boulogne-sur-Mer with her restless and secretive stepson Bernard who is haunted by a woman from his past named Muriel. Their lives changes when Hèlène is visited by her old lover Alphonse Noyard who has brought along a young woman named Francoise.

Masterfully directed by one of the greatest directors in cinema history, this character-driven and dialog-driven mystery, a metaphysical drama with rigorously composed visuals and sounds, about memories of love and war, where the past and the present is intertwined and where time dissolves, is a detailed and realistic portrayal of everyday life in a urban French town, a character in it self, where things much like the central characters are incomplete. Like Jean-Luc Godard`s "Le Petit Soldat" (1960), Alain Resnais film pointedly deals with themes of the Algerian War of Independence which had ended the year before "Muriel, or The Time of Return" was released.

The efficient use of cinematical devices and the creatively fragmented narrative is pivotal in this stringently structured and acutely written story, which is an enchantingly atmospheric and cryptic chamber piece with memorable acting performances. Like some of the greatest films made by directors Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) and Luis Buñuel (1900-1983), this symbolic, metaphorical and distinctly stylistic early nineteen sixties French-Italian co-production gradually decodes the consciousness of it`s characters. A truly engaging and elusive depiction of the human psyche which was awarded with the Volpi Cup for best actress - Delphine Seyrig (1932-1990) at the Venice Film Festival in 1963.