Muriel, or The Time of Return

Muriel ou Le Temps d’un retour

At the coastal town of Boulogne, Hélène lives with her stepson, Bernard, who has just returned from his military service in Algeria. An old lover of Hélène, Alphonse, who was also in Algeria, visits them with his niece, Françoise. Bernard keeps talking about his fiancée, Muriel, whom none of them has seen. While Alphonse and Hélène try to reconnect, everyone seems to be at a distressing emotional state, off balance, as the past haunts them in different ways, sinking them into guilt for all the lost opportunities.

Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.
Direction: Alain Resnais
Script: Jean Cayrol
Cinematography: Sacha Vierny
Editing: Kenout Peltier, Eric Pluet
Sound: Antoine Bonfanti
Music: Hans Werner Henze
Actors: Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kérien, Nita Klein
Production: Argos Films
Producers: Pierre Braunberger, Anatole Dauman, Carlo Fedier, Robert Haggiag
Co-production: Alpha Productions
Costumes: Lucilla Mussini
Make Up: Alexandre Marcus, Éliane Marcus
Format: DCP
Color: Color
Production Country: France, Italy
Production Year: 1963
Duration: 116'
Contact: Tamasa Distribution

Alain Resnais

Experimenting with such themes as consciousness, memory, and the imagination, Alain Resnais (1922–2014), whose career extended over more than six decades, was one of the most innovative French filmmakers of the 20th century. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct several short films which included Night and Fog (1956), an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps. Resnais began making feature films in the late 1950s and consolidated his early reputation with Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Last Year at Marienbad (1961), and Muriel (1963), all of which adopted unconventional narrative techniques to deal with themes of troubled memory and the imagined past. These films were contemporary with, and associated with, the French New Wave, though Resnais did not regard himself as being fully part of that movement. In the words of The Guardian’s Brian Baxter, “Resnais was a director of elegance and distinction, [and] his films were singular, instantly recognizable by their style as well as through recurring themes and preoccupations”.

Filmography

1947 Van Gogh (short doc)
1950 Guernica (short doc)
1956 Night and Fog (short doc)
1959 Hiroshima mon amour
1961 Last Year at Marienbad
1963 Muriel
1966 The War is Over
1968 Je t’aime, je t’aime
1977 Providence
1980 My American Uncle
1984 Love Unto Death
1993 Smoking/No Smoking
2006 Private Fears in Public Spaces
2009 Wild Grass
2014 Life of Riley