7. Last Year At Marienbad
It's amazing to think that Alain Resnais's Last Year At Marienbad's release in the US led to movie fans queuing up outside of movie theatres - few films are quite so deliberately obscure, mysterious and lacking in obvious popular appeal. Set in and around an opulent château and shot in crisp black and white widescreen cinematography, Last Year At Marienbad doesn't just deny the viewer an explanation for its mysterious narrative but invites them to disregard trying to figure it out altogether. A man discusses with a woman their prior meeting one year before - it's a meeting she doesn't recall, which may or may not have happened, and which sums up the line of questioning Resnais wants to establish about how we shape our own stories. As the characters reconfigure their relationships - just as they reconfigure the space they inhabit, which Resnais shows with some exceptionally staged shots - so too does the viewer find themselves endlessly reanalysinig what they have seen. As a cinematic puzzle, Last Year At Marienbad is almost impossible to solve - which, according to Resnais himself, is precisely the point.