Chris Marker

Contemporary Film Directors

by Nora M. Alter

The maverick filmmaker's personal and political relationships with film Best known in the United States for his visionary short film La Jetée, Chris Marker spearheaded the bourgeoning Nouvelle Vague scene in the late 1950s. His distinctive style and use of still images place him among the postwar era's most influential European filmmakers. His fearless political cinema, meanwhile, provided a bold model for other activist filmmakers. Nora M. Alter investigates the core themes and motivations behind an unpredictable and transnational career that defies easy classification. A photographer, multimedia artist, writer, broadcaster, producer, and organizer, Marker cultivated an artistic dynamism and always-changing identity. ""I am an essayist,"" Marker once said, and his 1953 debut filmic essay The Statues Also Die (with Alain Resnais) exposed the European art market's complicity in atrocities in the former Belgian Congo. Ranging geographically as well as artistically, Marker's travels led to films like the classic Sans Soleil and Sunday in Peking. His decades-long struggle against global injustice involved him with Night and Fog, Le Joli Mai, Far from Vietnam, Le fond du l'air est Rouge, and Prime Time in the Camps. Insightful and revealing, Chris Marker includes interviews with the notoriously private director.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Art

205 pages, Paperback

First published June 9, 2006

Reviews

[mao · Rating 2 out of 5]

A nice little book that situates Marker's work within different historical contexts, but it's more like a collection of academic reviews one might find in a newspaper (but to find Marker's films reviewed in a newspaper would be quite the exception!), without much thought or consideration of the very ideas (of/within the image, of/within time and space, of/within politics, etc.) that Marker interrogates within his art.

[Dany · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I never have a potential audience in mind. I've been told this is contemptuous. Well, that's debatable. Complying with an imaginary audience means one has so high an opinion of oneself that one believes oneself capable of delving into that audience's mind and adapting oneself to suit it; or simply thinking that one is not so exceptional that what moves and amuses one couldn't amuse and move others in the same way. Which shows the greater contempt?" (Interview with Delores Walfisch, 1996)

"Scenario, actress, use of a text.... All that is really meaningless as far as I am concerned. Film is a totality; I let my intuition guide me into it; features combine like parts of my imaginary Meccano [construction toy]; I never wonder about if, why, how." (Interview with Jean-Michel Frodon, 1997)

[Claude Bertout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chris Marker is a secretive and influential film maker and writer who's played an active role on the French intellectual scene since the late 1940s. This book presents a well-documented analysis of his oeuvre in a highly readable way.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alter’s writing isn’t all that exciting but her analysis is solid and this is a really good primer on Marker’s films that toes the line between academia and popular analysis.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good monograph. Marker has a gargantuan amount of films, TV series, multimedia installations, and others, so Alter had to be selective in what she covered. Nevertheless, I feel some of the sections could have been trimmed. It all starts to sound like repeating itself.

I read this because some time ago I watched Sans Soleil and really didnt get it, so I hoped some good criticism would shed some light. I don't think the section on that film necessarily shed a lot of light, but reading explications for his other films definitely made Sans Soleil feel more digestible and demystified it a bit. Alter did a great job contextualizing Marker within the history of the 20th century, evolving technologies, and evolving politics, from the optimistic 60s to the cynical 70s and the postmodern 2000s. Plus she made sure to center dialectics in his work. Good book

[Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basically exactly what I was looking for. A brief yet thorough and thematic/analytical look at the elusive Chris Marker's life and work. The only thing is that the writing style was far from very inspired and the structure of the book felt sort of nonlinear/arbitrary at times. But as an overview, this book is excellent and makes me want to further dive into Marker's filmography. What a wonderful fellow.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars for introducing me to letters from Siberia and level five, minus two stars for not talking about any of the Chris marker films I've actually seen

[Jacqueline Valencia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew very little of Chris Marker's personal life, but I do know how much he influenced film as a story telling device. His visuals are an aesthetic that is used in most all documentary films these days. My love for his work started with a little film I saw long ago about one of his cats, a Guilliame.

If you're looking for an inspirational fragment or centre of modern avant garde, I highly recommend reading anything or seeing anything on Chris Marker. If you're into essays, poetic forms, and the aesthetic of documenting events on film, do that as well.

I really enjoyed Nora M. Ater's three staged analysis on Marker. It gave me a thorough insight into his motivations in the film essay medium: taking visuals, all shocking and mundane alike, and recreating a giant memory snapshot on film.

It lays bare a study of this most enigmatic filmmaker and visionary.

I'm also enjoying a few of these University of Illinois Press books on Film Studies.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably not an especially exciting book for people who don't like Chris Marker, but for those who do (like me), this quickie overview of his career is worth a look. It's slighter but better written than Catherine Lupton's recent Marker book. It's very frustrating, though, to read about films that are almost impossible to see.