L'immortale

Robbe-Grillet's brilliant first film, just a year after writing the screenplay for Last year in Marienbad (so detailed that it's impossible not to assign autorship of the film as much to him as to Alain Resnais).

It is interesting to compare the two works, and to note that the narrative and structural innovations of the film directed by Resnais are a constant in Robbe-Grillet's work, both literary and cinematographic. Unfortunately, the stupid author theory has always privileged the director over the screenwriter.

Resnais certainly endowed Last year in Marienbad with an incredible visual sophistication, an elegance and beauty in the images and an affectation in the interpretations, and it is true that his previous and subsequent work shows an absolute harmony with the material. Also, more importantly, he developed unprecedented abilities in editing. But underneath this cosmetics and this fascinating packaging, the constants of Robbe-Grillet's work underlie.

L'immortelle is more abrupt, more visually direct, obsessed with space-time raccord discontinuities, but also based on disorientation, on falsehoods, on the reworkings of the mind, on the repetition of the same images with different meanings, on the transforming capacity of the memory. It is, yes, much warmer and more sensual, renouncing the icy formal perfection that results so much in distance in Resnais's work.

That sensuality, will lead in later works of Robbe-Grillet more and more in an annoying sadomasochistic aberration, and in an undoubted misogyny that reaches the delusional.

In L'Immortelle, a suspicious and unexpressive protagonist finds himself trapped in a fantasy that involves a woman and a city, both equally mysterious, deceitful and beautiful, in the threatening presence of a controlling corporation made up of neighbors, street vendors, bar customers, fishermen, led by a sinister character with sunglasses and accompanied at all times by a couple of imposing dogs.

The scenes, as in all of the auteur's films, matter for themselves, for the narrative paths they seem to open, for where they point, rather than as links in a linear story that does not exist. Robbe-Grillet centers them on clichés of the most commercial and serial cinema, flattering the viewer's imagination, as if it were a noir or mistery film, using exotic and fascinating sets ( in this case Istanbul shows all its mystery, its fascination, its decadent charm, its supposedly threatening background, and its most picturesque corners). But time and again Robbe-Grillet ends up disenchanting the viewer, or leaving him in suspense, when everything is shown as a simple decoy, as a false trail that leads nowhere.

The film could suffer from a story that is too basic and is assumed to be unimportant, a simple starting point for Robbe-Grillet juggling, which can be a bit tiresome in the middle of the film. But Robbe-Grillet knows when to take the puzzle apart to assemble the pieces differently, and thereby regain the attention of the possibly distracted viewer in time.

Robbe-Grillet would continue down this same path, breaking down soap opera stories into increasingly clever and cerebral games, but also stripping female leads more and more naked, and subjecting them to increasingly unacceptable mistreatment and torture.

A Frenchman, who is a teacher, arrives in Istanbul, and has, or tries to have, a relationship with a mysterious woman in an uncooperative, seemingly threatening, environment.

The dream-like atmosphere of this film will be immediately familiar to those who have had the pleasure of enjoying Last Year at Marienbad (which was written, but not directed, by Robbe-Grillet); and l'Immortelle feels like a cross between that film and The Color of Pomegranates. The mostly stylized acting is perfectly realized by all concerned, young and old alike; and in short there are no rough seams in the fabric of this film. Maurice Barry is at the camera and provides us with beautiful evocative images of features of Istanbul, such as some of its mosques, the old walls of Constantinople, and the Bosporus waterfront.

What happens or doesn't happen? We find that facts never quite marshal into realities. Understanding is non-linear. Imagination profanes experience . . . Or is it the other way around? The film is a lyrical opium-dream, evading the rational as it speaks to the subconscious. Highly recommended.

This was the first film to be directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet, who also wrote it. This was two years after his historic collaboration (as writer) with Alain Resnais (as director) in making the famous LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961), which is certainly one of the highest achievements of world cinema. As a novelist, Robbe-Grillet was one of the founding members of the school known as the Nouveau Roman (New Novel). When I was a student I read a couple of those novels and found them very difficult and artificial. But his visions of things worked much better on film, so it is not surprising that he turned to the medium of cinema, which suited him so much more. And the worldwide success of MARIENBAD gave him the boost of fame necessary to raise the funding for this, his first film as director. Strangely enough, I have somewhere a letter which Robbe-Grillet wrote to me early in 1963, when I was still at university, so that I was in touch with him at the very time this film was emerging. Robbe-Grillet was so powerfully influenced by Surrealism that he may himself be safely described as Late Surrealist. This film, set in Istanbul, is strongly Surrealist in every respect. But he was doubtless deeply influenced also by a novel set in Istanbul by Claude Farrère (1876-1957), L'homme Qui Assassina (The Man Who Killed), which has been filmed six times: in 1913, 1920, twice in French in 1931 and once in German in 1931, and in Spanish in 1932. Farrère also emphasized the timeless and exotic dream-like quality of Istanbul in his weird mystery novel. He was intimately acquainted with Istanbul prior to the First World War, and he evoked its magic, secrecy, and intrigue from his own experiences there. I may be one of the few people left alive in the English-speaking world who has actually read that strange and haunting book, but I suspect that Robbe- Grillet knew it well and had seen at least one of the French films of the story. L'IMMORTELLE has such overwhelmingly spectacular cinematography of the ruins and mysteries of Istanbul that anyone interested in the city needs to see it for that reason alone. In one weird scene, two of the characters pass in a rowboat across the famous Byzantine underwater cistern, and one could never do such a thing today. But this film was made in an easier time, 1962, when many of the old Ottoman wooden houses still remained, and Istanbul was still not only a place of mystery but a location steeped in antiquity at every turn. The story, or what passes for a story (for it has no beginning middle or end), is a meditation upon the immortality of the mystery of Woman., in other words The Immortal Woman. Robbe-Grillet chose as this elusive muse the actress Francoise Brion. Unfortunately, she is but a pale imitation of the haunting and thoroughly magical Delphine Seyrig, who played such a similar role in MARIENBAD. Robbe-Grillet wanted another Seyrig but he got only a partial one, for she looks too knowing, and instead of exuding an atmosphere of impenetrable mystery and representing a total enigma, Brion does not fool us, for we know she is only acting. (Whether Seyrig was acting or instead becoming possessed by a spirit we do not know.) People expecting a coherent narrative will get neither coherence nor a narrative. But that is intentional and is part of what it means to be a Surrealist. A true Surrealist never explains, he suggests, mystifies, and leaves you wondering. Of course, there are many story elements in the film nevertheless, it is just that we never learn what they all mean. Why is there a man wearing sunglasses at dead of night holding two snarling hounds of hell? Why do the main characters keep walking around an ancient Turkish cemetery and intoning their thoughts about life and death to each other? Why is there a car crash which keeps repeating, and with different people inside? Why is there an intense romance which keeps dissolving and re-forming like a shifting mist? And meanwhile the camera glides along in endless travelling shots showing us the endless ancient walls, the palaces and fortresses along the Bosphorus, and the courtyards of old mosques. Brion attempts to show le Néant ('nothingness', a fashionable Existentialist notion at the time this film was made) on her face, but her eyes do not go dead enough, they do not glaze over properly. She dresses stylishly, always in new outfits. She is in the bedroom, then she is on a boat, sometimes laughing, sometimes staring emptily, then she is on her knees inside a mosque, then on a boat again smiling enigmatically, and then a dog barks savagely, and she keeps insisting 'Je suis libre' ('I am free'). All the mysteries of this film are unsolved, because they stand for Life and for Love, neither of which is ever solved and neither of which ever ends.

The French film L'immortelle (1963) was written and directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet. It stars Françoise Brion as L, the Woman. Jacques Doniol-Valcroze portrays N, the Man.

Director Robbe-Grillet wrote the screenplay for Renais' Last Year in Marienbad. If you've seen that movie, you'll remember that it was very quiet and almost dream-like. L'Immortelle makes Last Year in Marienbad look like an action movie.

The plot has an interesting concept--a man and a woman from France meet in Istanbul. He falls in love with her, but we don't know if she falls in love with him.

They wander through Istanbul. At every touristic site, she tells him that none of it is real. The ancient mosque was just built a year earlier, the cemetery was created for tourists, etc.

Then they part, and the plot consists of him looking for her. Many people either don't or won't speak French. Others give him information, but it's always wrong.

Robbe-Grillet shows us many interesting--if ominous--characters, like the man with two savage Dobermans. There's a second and third woman, both of whom know something, but don't share it with the man.

The movie does have its positive aspects--seeing the sights of Istanbul, and watching Françoise Brion appear in glorious Nina Ricci outfits--on a beach, on a boat, at an elegant party. (Director Robbe-Grillet loves to photograph Brion. He particularly likes long, slow scenes where we see her face in closeup.)

If you are a fan of 1960's French cinema, especially.of the Nouveau Roman* style, this is the movie for you. Otherwise, I'd look for another movie by another director.

L'immortelle has a decent 7.2 IMDb rating. I agreed, and rated it 7.

*Truth in reviewing: I hadn't heard about the Nouveau Roman style. It turns out that Robbe-Grillet was an influential author as well as a director. Robbe-Grillet wrote the standard work about Nouveau Roman. It's defined as "a work of art that would be an individual version and vision of things, subordinating plot and character to the details of the world rather than enlisting the world in their service." Now I know.

"Immortal" is an odd word for a film which is a chronicle of two characters' deaths foretold. Alain Robbe-Grillet's directorial debut has the circular dream logic and preordained destinies often found in his later films. The heroine (Francoise Brion) may not be physically tied up, unlike actresses in his S&M-heavy later features, but she is just as trapped. The enigmatic, surrealistic, non-linear story-telling remains a breath of fresh air, but the abuse of stereotypes (e.g., exoticizing the Istanbul settings and associating all Turkish men with Ottoman Harems) makes _L'Immortelle_ feel dated.

_L'Immortelle_ sends me back to _Last Year at Marienbad_. Resnais's 1961 film, with screenplay solely credited to Robbe-Grillet, probably sheds light on what the latter intended in his own directorial work; the differences are telling too.

I haven't seen _Marienbad_ in decades.

After this viewing, it strikes me as an author wrestling with a fictional heroine who has a mind of her own. He imposes his words and memory on her, strangles the last drop of autonomy out of his invention, tries to bully her into submission by the sheer force of repetition (although the narrator seems to get confused by his own voice too!). In fact, Robbe-Grillet has published 4 well-regarded, avant garde novels by 1961. In this respect, _L'Immortelle_ is like _Marienbad_. There are numerous other similarities in the acting styles of the supporting characters, the tracking shots, and the editing.

The main difference is the actress playing the heroine. Robbe-Grillet supposedly didn't like Delphine Seyrig for _Marienbad_; in his own film 2 years later he chose the voluptuous Francoise Brion for her pliant poses. There would be plenty more such vacant female characters in _The Beautiful Prisoner_, _Playing with Fire_, _Gradiva_ ...

The slim, bird-like Seyrig cannot be more different. With her head tilted, her sharp elbow folded at acute angles, and her even sharper guffaw, she wordlessly creates a counter-narrative. This must be why Resnais picked her. (Seyrig also starred in the almost-as-ambiguous _India Song_. Elizabeth Debicki, who loves to tilt her long frame, may be Seyrig's spiritual descendent.)

It would be unfair to compare the image quality of _Marienbad_ and _L'Immortelle_, since I streamed the latter off Tubi. No one can match the early Resnais's tracking shots, but _L'Immortelle_ is certainly well framed and thought-provoking.

Watch it while you still can on Tubitv.