You, the viewer of this film, could well be the subject of the story Chris Marker is telling, for La Jetée stages an exploration of time travel through afflictions of memory. It was no accident that he chose Jacques Ledoux, then-curator of the Royal Film Archive of Belgium, to play the leader of this experiment, which bears a curious resemblance to the experience of a film audience.

One of the most celebrated shorts in the history of film, La Jetée calls back Chris Marker’s obsession with the Hitchcock film Vertigo, hence the presence of the character named Madeleine. From the fetishized memory of Proust to Marker, this Madeleine becomes a vehicle to move through the idealized time of the world of film, which is made up, as we know, of still photos that create the illusion of movement. For a single shot in the middle of the film, this illusory movement appears as a revelation of love for a woman, one who symbolizes the magic of cinema.

This love story is also one that Chris Marker could never experience with director and editor, Hélène Châtelain, who plays Madeleine as glimpsed on the quay at Orly. Ironically, Châtelain suffered from memory loss before she passed away, but their phantom love story lives on in this short. At the end of the experience, the enlightened viewer understands that not only are they the central character of this film, but that we are all helpless against the march of time—film being the sole exception.

Denys Desjardins
alias Syned Sindrajed
Filmmaker, Essayist, and Artistic Director

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