A man is a prisoner in the aftermath of World War III in post-apocalyptic Paris, where survivors live underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries. Scientists research time travel, hoping to send test subjects to different time periods "to call past and future to the rescue of the present". They have difficulty finding subjects who can mentally withstand the shock of time travel. The scientists eventually settle upon the protagonist; his key to the past is a vague but obsessive memory from his pre-war childhood of a woman he had seen on the observation platform at Orly Airport shortly before witnessing a startling incident there. He did not understand exactly what happened, but knew he had seen a man die. After several attempts, he reaches the pre-war period. He meets the woman from his memory, and they develop a romantic relationship. After his successful passages to the past, the experimenters attempt to send him into the far future. In a brief meeting with the technologically advanced people of the future, he is given a power unit sufficient to regenerate his own destroyed society. Upon his return, with his mission accomplished, he discerns that he is to be executed by his jailers. He is contacted by the people of the future, who offer to help him escape to their time permanently; but he asks instead to be returned to the pre-war time of his childhood, hoping to find the woman again. He is returned to the past, placed on the jetty at the airport, and it occurs to him that the child version of himself is probably also there at the same time. He is more concerned with locating the woman, and quickly spots her. However, as he rushes to her, he notices an agent of his jailers who has followed him and realizes the agent is about to kill him. In his final moments, he comes to understand that the incident he witnessed as a child, which has haunted him ever since, was his own death.
La Jetée is constructed almost entirely from optically printed photographs playing out as a photomontage of varying rhythm. It contains only one brief shot originating on a motion-picture camera, this due to the fact that Marker could only afford to hire one for an afternoon. The stills were taken with a Pentax Spotmatic and the motion-picture segment was shot with a 35 mmArriflex. The film has no dialogue aside from small sections of muttering in German and people talking in an airport terminal. The story is told by a voice-over narrator. The scene in which the hero and the woman look at a cut-away trunk of a tree is a reference to Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo which Marker also references in his 1983 film Sans soleil. The editing of La Jetée adds to the intensity of the film. With the use of cut-ins and fade-outs, it produces the eerie and unsettling nature adding to the theme of the apocalyptic destruction of World War III. Terry Gilliam, director of 12 Monkeys, describes the editing as "simply poetic" in the combination of editing and soundtrack that is used in the short film. As the film plays out as a photomontage, the only continuous variable is the sound. The sound used in this production is minimal, showing up in the form of narration, Orchestral score and sound effect. The rhythmic patterns of the soundtrack act as a framework to add to the intensity of the film. "The dissolve is synchronized with the sound. As the story moves from the past to the present, La Jetee creates mental continuity." The soundtrack adds to the illusion of movement within the film and the change of time.
Interpretation
In Black and Blue, her study of postwar French fiction, Carol Mavor describes La Jetée as "taking place in a no-place in no-time " which she connects to the time and place of the fairy tale. She further elaborates: "even the sound of the title resonates with the fairy-tale surprise of finding oneself in another world: La Jetée evokes 'là j'étais' ". By "u-topia", Mavor does not refer to "utopia" as the word is commonly used; she also describes an ambiguity of dystopia/utopia in the film: "It is dystopia with the hope of utopia, or is it utopia cut by the threat of dystopia." Tor Books blogger Jake Hinkson summed up his interpretation in the title of an essay about the film, "There's No Escape Out of Time". He elaborated: Hinkson also addresses the symbolic use of imagery: "The Man is blindfolded with some kind of padded device and he sees images. The Man is chosen for this assignment because... he has maintained a sharp mind because of his attachment to certain images. Thus a film told through the use of still photos becomes about looking at images." He further observes that Marker himself did not refer to La Jetée as a film, but as photo novel. Yannis Karpouzis makes a structuralistic analysis on La Jetée, examining it as an intermedial artwork: Chris Marker creates an "archive" of objects and conditions that have a photographic quality of their own and they are followed by the same predicates as pictures. The dialogue between the media and the filmic signifier is constantly in the backdrop.
The video for Sigue Sigue Sputnik's 1989 single "Dancerama" is also an homage to La Jetée. The film is one of the influences in the video for David Bowie's "Jump They Say". Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys was inspired by and takes several concepts directly from La Jetée. The 2003 short film La puppé is both an homage to and a parody of La Jetée. The 2007 Mexican film Year of the Nail, which is told entirely through still photographs, was inspired by La Jetée. Kode9 in collaboration with Ms. Haptic, Marcel Weber, and Lucy Benson created an homage to La Jetée in 2011, for the Unsound Festival. Northern Irish rock band Two Door Cinema Club screened the film at the launch party for their 2016 album Gameshow. The final track on the album, "Je viens de la", is inspired by La Jetée and describes the journey of the film's protagonist. The film was included in the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die'' by producer, Steven Schneider.
Related media
In 1996, Zone Books released a book which reproduced the film's original images along with the script in both English and French.
In Region 2, the film is available with English subtitles in the La Jetée/Sans soleildigipack released by Arte Video. In Region 1, the Criterion Collection has released a La Jetée/Sans soleil combination DVD / Blu-ray, which features the option of hearing the English or French narration.
