Muriel, or the Time of Return (1963)

In the seacoast town of Boulogne, Hélène sells antique furniture, living with her step-son, Bernard, who's back from military duty in Algiers. An old lover of Hélène's comes to visit - Alphonse - with his niece Françoise; he too is back from Algiers, where he ran a café.This was Resnais's third feature film, following "Hiroshima mon amour" (1959) and "L'Année dernière à Marienbad" (1961). The first is a classic, the second is one of my all-time favorites. This film, though, does not seem to be widely known and is the less of the three. Not bad by any means, just not on par with the two previous works.The music from Hans Werner Henze is notable and quite good, really being he highlight of the film for me. Henze is a strange and interesting figure, who worked in Germany, Italy and Cuba, but that is really neither here nor there.

Muriel (Muriel ou Le temps d'un retour) Muriel, or The Time of Return 1963 In the seacoast town of Boulogne, Hélène sells antique furniture, living with her step-son, Bernard, who's back from military duty in Algiers. An old lover of Hélène's comes to visit - Alphonse - with his niece Françoise; he too is back from Algiers, where he ran a café. Bernard speaks of his fiancée, Muriel, whom Hélène has not met. The narrative, like memory & intention, is jumpy; the past obscured by guilt, misperceptions, & missed possibilities. Appearances deceive, things change. As Hélène & Alphonse try to sort out a renewal, everyone seems off-kilter just enough to hint that all cannot end well. Can anyone know another? Delphine Seyrig won a Volpi Cup for best actress at the 1963 Venice Film Festival. The film was nominated for a Golden Lion. I only recently heard about Resnais while reading up on new foreign films not release here in USA (or in limited release) His new film is Les Herbes Folles (Wild Grass) which won a lot acclaim at Cannes & other festivals this year. Muriel is a film that is about thinking about past times. I Interesting exploration of memory/existentialism. It is also a film about madness. Several of the characters appear to be mad ( or more than mildly eccentric in many ways. ) As a film maker I find his French new wave & camera techniques & storytelling very fresh & inventive. This is my first film of his to view I have ordered most all except the one that bombed. (I Want to go home) I guess if you are not one of the art film crowd the movie will be too choppy & weird for you. I think I will watch it again this weekend. I found it intriguing. I loved the opera arias interspersed with the odd ball Avant garde jazz. Strange tale strange music strange story strange film making techniques. I LOVED THIS FILM. One problem on my disc some of the subtitles hung & I missed the conversation in a few scenes then they would come back on again. I am looking for the script to the movie or the full subtitles. Resnais's images are never quite as striking in this film as they were with a limited color palette (in some of his other films) Sacha Vierny creates some gorgeous Antonioni-like shots of landscapes and architecture.

If we hold it to be true that "cinema is life with all the boring parts cut out", then "Muriel" takes it further by being cinema with all the boring parts cut out. What amounts to quite possibly a four hour movie condensed and compounded into a pristine narrative about memory and guilt, Alain Resnais' post-Marienbad movie shows a remarkable talent in plugging directly into the viewer's senses in unforgettable ways. Emphasis on the unforgettable.Ever had those moments where you were falling asleep during a movie, and then something important happens and you suddenly snap awake and fret over whether you may have missed something? Yeah, that's every single cut in this movie. "Muriel" feels less like the full cinematic experience and more like all of the parts you remember after you haven't seen it for some years. That is not to say, however, that it is missing anything in its structure, including story and character development. It's all there, it's just compounded: dialog continues after the scene has changed, reaction shots are cut in half by moving on to the next reaction, establishing shots are also the first action shots of the scene, and the score is minimalized in, well, the maximum way possible (sometimes a single note stands in for an entire emotion). Same thing works with the writing and how it's blocked. Characters get upset and in the next frame are smiling. Someone asks where Bernard is and the next cut he's directly with them, having been there for several hours. The few days over which this story take place could just as easily be hours or years, and characters are constantly reading the news and never responding to it. Time and space in this movie are altered in very significant and unusual ways--in my opinion, brilliant ways.Leave it to the director of Night and Fog and Hiroshima, Mon Amour to come up with something like this. What would seem for the most part to be a story about fractured relationships in a small French town is also an essay on the culpability of the French character in WWII and Algiers. The title refers not to a character, as it seems at first, but to Bernard's victim. Alphonse's statements about being a part of the resistance are later proved false, showing that even in his attempt to make amends with his ex-lover, he cannot stand up for his own liability in the war-efforts of a past generation. The only woman who cares for both of them (Helene, Bernard's step-mother and Alphonse's ex-lover), truly cares, has only a tenuous relationship with either, and can't even remember if she truly did love Alphonse while also being emotionally stuck on a fire that burned down her house, killing Bernard's father.This is a spectacular movie in pretty much all respects. It's not for the easy-going film-goer, as it keeps a very brisk pace and thus can be hard to keep up with if one is not paying attention. However, it is so securely set in its writing, mise-en-scene, and editing, that it's not necessarily difficult to understand. A must for any fan of Resnais, French cinema in general, or those who are attracted by the relationship between cinema and memory--especially emotional memory.--PolarisDiB

This movie is alright, but no comparison can be made to Last Year at Marienbad. This movie is a little slow at first, and although the shots and techniques are well done, they are not Marienbad or in anyway equal to it.