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Stephanie Scott ART 333 – Photo Book February 4, 2013 Reading Assignment Three

La Jetee

During our class Wednesday, January 30, we watched the film La Jetee by French filmmaker Chris Marker in 1962. The film runs just under 30 minutes and is made up of almost all still photos; a man’s voice narrates. Several series of individual still images create sequences, the visual of the narrative as a man undergoes scientific experimentation in the underbelly of post-war Paris.

Over twenty-two years, I have seen hundreds of movies, but I do not believe I have ever seen a movie that was created with only still images. Sure, many movies have used still images within the narrative to emphasis certain parts (such as character memory) and many have been narrated by a voice or simply by the visuals (images, events, etc.) and characters telling the story.

When comparing the film to how it could possible appear as a book, both forms would be similar yet different at the same time. In the film the images change without the flip of a page and the narration is spoken, being able to be heard and seen by dozens of people at once. The quick change of a certain sequence, such as when the woman is lying in bed, gives the images the appearances of being animated (as she shifts in bed and blinks her eyes). With several other sequences, even though the images were still, the camera moves across them, zooming in and out to give motion to inanimate images.

If the film had been in book form, the images would have been limited to a certain size to leave space for the physical text of the narration. Multiple images would be on the page at once to act as a visual accompaniment of the narration, though the amount of them would be limited

on certain pages. Repetition would be easier to identify on the printed page. However, certain editing processes, such as fading and dissolving of the images to change sequences, would not be possible in a physical book. If the book was digital, there could be a possibility of certain visual transitions between sequences.

This movie was similar to previous movies I had seen in relation to its narrative and sequence. During my Intro to Visual Thinking class, we watched a movie called Memento in which a man suffering from short-term memory loss uses photographs and notes to retain memory. Though Memento is a live-action film, some of the sequencing is similar to La Jetee in the repetition of sequences, such as the repeated photographs in the experimentation scenes. The main character takes photographs with notes to remember certain things, and with every new day the sequence of the main character repeats itself with the addition of new photographs.

The movie La Jetee was essentially a basic stop-motion film, with only still photographs and the narrator’s voice leading us through the story. However, La Jette can also be seen as an animated photo book, with the addition of a vocal narration easing our understanding of the story and sequence.