Sans Soleil

August 17, 2010 12:42 PM

Sans Soleil is a pseudo-documentary meditation on memory by Chris Marker (of La Jetée fame)
posted by juv3nal (14 comments total)

Anyone who hasn't seen this, watch this film. It's excellent.
posted by reductiondesign at 12:43 PM on August 17, 2010

Oh I see what you did here! Two Chris Marker mentions in less than 30 minutes? I think this is no coincidence.

Chris Marker's best documentary, which I mentioned here before, is the Grin Without a Cat. It has achieved legendary status among my friends. There's a certain hypnotic quality to his films, like you're always right on the precipice of a big revelation.

Sans Soleil is wonderful, I'd encourage anyone to at least download it off a torrent site as the compression of Google/YouTube is awful.

Sort of dorky side note: I once spent considerable time trying to get an HD transfer of Grin Without a Cat and in the process managed to collect his other films. Apparently high quality telecines are hard to come by, or rather, very expensive. I even had some friends who work in the film industry and despite my various pleading, could never get anyone to run it through their expensive telecine equipment. I was fairly close to just borrowing and HD camera, set it up next to the projector and try to get a transfer that way. It never really surpassed DVD quality.
posted by geoff. at 12:54 PM on August 17, 2010

That's exactly what happened, geoff. It's remarkable that you noticed.
posted by juv3nal at 12:55 PM on August 17, 2010

I like La Jetee a lot more; I find Sans Soleil pretentious the way the worst of Godard's dialogue can be...(yes, burn me at the stake now). I can't explain it either, because it's not like I abhor that kind of self-reflective overbrainy dialogue all the time--Rohmer and Linklater are two of my favorites, so. Hm.
posted by ifjuly at 12:57 PM on August 17, 2010

It's on Netflix Instant Watch as well, if any subscribers want a high-quality version.
posted by theodolite at 12:58 PM on August 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

geoff.: “Chris Marker's best documentary, which I mentioned here before, is the Grin Without a Cat. It has achieved legendary status among my friends. There's a certain hypnotic quality to his films, like you're always right on the precipice of a big revelation.”

Holy crap, they finally released Le Fond de l'air est rouge on DVD?! I've been looking for that fucker for years. Wish I'd known they changed the title in English. I like Grin Without A Cat as a title, though.

Thank you for (inadvertently) letting me know this exists. I am very happy. And I'm excited for this weekend to come.

By the way, since we're on the subject, Chris Marker's more recent film, Chats Perchés [2004] is really worth seeing, as well. Very interesting chronicle of Sept 11 / the Iraq war and the state of mind in France during the early 2000s.
posted by koeselitz at 1:32 PM on August 17, 2010

Any way to see Chats Perches with subtitles?
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 2:40 PM on August 17, 2010

> By the way, since we're on the subject, Chris Marker's more recent film, Chats Perchés [2004] is really worth seeing, as well. Very interesting chronicle of Sept 11 / the Iraq war and the state of mind in France during the early 2000s.

Thanks for that, and I too am glad to know about the Fond de l'air DVD.
posted by languagehat at 3:04 PM on August 17, 2010

Sans Soleil is about 5 minutes of interesting footage of early-80s Japan and 5 minutes of interesting footage of other things, surrounded by 90 minutes of really uninteresting footage and some really unsettling footage of a giraffe getting shot and bleeding to death. :(
posted by luvcraft at 3:52 PM on August 17, 2010

Sans Soleil is a very romantic movie, about wanting someone else to see what you're seeing and to know how seeing these things makes you feel. Which means it's exploring some of the same themes as La Jetee. Both are wonderful.

Another must-see Marker documentary is A.K., about director Akira Kurosawa and the making of Ran.
posted by grounded at 4:21 PM on August 17, 2010

foxy_hedgehog: "Any way to see Chats Perches with subtitles?"

Subtitles here.
posted by beerbajay at 4:30 PM on August 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

There's a moment in Wenders' Tokyo Ga where Chris Marker makes a brief cameo.
posted by shoepal at 5:18 PM on August 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

i've always loved the part about action-cooking.
posted by lapolla at 2:09 AM on August 18, 2010

shoepal: “There's a moment in Wenders' Tokyo Ga where Chris Marker makes a brief cameo.”

I'm glad you mentioned Tokyo Ga – love that movie. It is in some ways a companion-piece to Sans Soleil, and I recommend it to everyone who likes Marker. (Marker's appearance is interesting in Tokyo-Ga – he is very coy. Heh.)

Of course, Tokyo-Ga is primarily a film about Yasujiro Ozu, the greatest director Japan ever produced. And it's available as the bonus in the Criterion DVD of Late Spring, which is yet another film I can recommend highly.
posted by koeselitz at 2:42 AM on August 18, 2010