Ep# 88 - Dwight Macdonald's 60s Pick: Last Year at Marienbad

Cinema60

Cinema60 is back with a ghost guest in order to highlight some notable opinions on film. Dwight Macdonald, a celebrity film critic of the ‘50s and ‘60s who is now more remembered as a cultural critic and political pundit, had a lot to say about the dumbing down of high art to appeal to middlebrow tastes. Championing films that challenged audiences, he famously took on Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad as one of the most difficult films to ever be embraced by American audiences.

While he does not consider the film one of his favorites, he admires its techniques and ambitions. He would use it as a touchstone through his career to describe the type of film that pushes boundaries of what cinema can do and engages on a higher level. In this episode, Bart and Jenna respond to Macdonald, muse on the actual difficulty of such a film and use his word to illustrate their own mission statement.

The following film is discussed:
•Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
L'année dernière à Marienbad
Directed by Alain Resnais
Starring Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoëff
Text discussed:
• On Movies (1969) by Dwight Mcdonald
Other films mentioned:
• Citizen Kane (1941)
Directed by Orson Welles
Starring Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore

• Children of Paradise (1945)
Les enfants du paradis
Directed by Marcel Carné
Starring Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur

• Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)
Directed by Alain Resnais
Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada, Stella Dassas

• Breathless (1960)
À bout de souffle
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Jean-Pierre Melville

• La Dolce Vita (1960)
Directed by Federico Fellini
Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée

• Jules & Jim (1962)
Directed by François Truffaut
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, Henri Serre