Amazon.co.uk Review
A man from a post-apocalyptic future is chosen to return to the past in order help save humanity because he's haunted by a vivid memory from his childhood of a murder at an airport. If that sounds familiar, you've either already seen Chris Marker's exquisite "photo-roman" or Terry Gilliam's loose remake of it, (
Twelve Monkeys.) Good as Gilliam's film is, it's no substitute for
La Jetée, which is the sort of cinematic experimental oddity that wraps around the imagination like a vine and, once seen, can never be forgotten.
A mere 25 minutes long, the "film"--really a series of still photographs run together apart from one startling moment of movement--begins in Paris before a vaguely described war drives humanity underground "to rule over a kingdom of rats". Sent back in time to the present (or rather to the film's 1962 present) by nothing more high-tech than an injection, the hero (Davos Hanich) finds the woman (Hél&eagrave;ne Chatelain) whose face he's remembered all his life since a murder at Paris' Orly airport. They grab a modest measure of happiness in their romance, conducted around Paris' museums and public gardens. A sly allusion to Hitchcock's Vertigo underlines the film's key theme: the near-mystical power of memory and the way an image can form the basis of an obsession, hence the film's use of ominous black-and-white stills, like scraps from disorganised family album. Muted and melancholy, La Jetée also sports one of the all-time great cinematic twists. --Leslie Felperin
Synopsis
Told almost entirely in stills, this short film takes a man from the future on a journey back to his childhood.
![La Jetee / Sans Soleil [DVD] [1966]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/411AP22AW6L._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
![La Jetee [VHS] [1966]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Y1R7Z8B3L._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
With an Amazon.co.uk 
