Philosophy and Film Theory

December 1 - 9, 2003

December 1 (Monday) 9 pm

Last Year at Marienbad (L’Année dernière à Marienbad)

Directed by Alain Resnais
France/Italy, 1961, b/w, 94 min.
With Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoëff
French with English subtitles

Working from a script by the celebrated novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, Resnais created dazzling surfaces, a hypnotic rhythm of deliberately paced camera movements, and a dense atmosphere of sexual tension centered about Delphine Seyrig, who delivers an extraordinary, otherworldly performance. Set in an opulent chateau/resort hotel with an elaborate geometric garden, the story tracks the encounters of a set of unnamed characters in an atmosphere heavy with memory and imagination of what might have occurred a year ago and what might occur now.

December 9 (Monday) 9 pm

Hamlet

Directed by Michael Almereyda
US, 2000, color, 111 min.
With Ethan Hawke, Kyle MacLachlan, Bill Murray

Director Michael Almereyda resituates Shakespeare’s most famous play amidst the corporate, high-tech, digitalized world of contemporary Manhattan. The Bard’s original text is intact and delivered with emotional conviction in psychologically rich performances by an impressive cast. But the classic story of family conflict, thwarted love, and confrontation with death is opened out to embrace spectacular images and rhythms of modern metropolitan life, which come to seem a natural home to this archetypal tale.