La jetée
- written and directed by Chris Marker
- Short Film
- Science Fiction, Experimental
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- French
- La jetée, written and directed by Chris Marker (at movie theaters, France, 16 February 1962) [Accessed at Youtube on 28 February 2022.].
In a world made uninhabitable by the Third World War, a prisoner is chosen as being the only person with vivid enough memories of the past to travel through time and return with salvation.
This 28-minute photo montage with about 1,200 words of narration has a nice seed of an idea, but I find it insulting to other talented filmmakers that Time magazine ranked this sketch of a film as #1 in their 2010 list of best time travel movies.
This 28-minute photo montage with about 1,200 words of narration has a nice seed of an idea, but I find it insulting to other talented filmmakers that Time magazine ranked this sketch of a film as #1 in their 2010 list of best time travel movies.
—Michael Main
Tel était le but des expériences : projeter dans le Temps des émissaires, appeler le passé et l’avenit au secours du présent.
translate
Such was the purpose of the experiments: to project emissaries into Time, to summon the Past and the Future to the aid of the Present.
Tags
(10)
- Time Periods
- Timeline Models
- Single Consistent Timeline: An early example of a single static timeline in film.
- Time Travel Methods
- Hypnosis, Mental Powers, Potions, and Drug-Induced Travel: Impossible to know the precise time travel mechanism, but something is injected into the traveler, and his vivid memories of the one day at Orly seem to be vital.
- Themes
- Causal Loops: The prisoner is selected because of his vivid memory of a death at Orly, which eventually causes him to be sent back to Orly on the day of that death, where he is the one who dies.
- Pleas for Help from Another Time
- Self-Visitation: The prisoner’s younger self sees his older self.
- Thought Projection through Time: The people of the future communicate with the prisoner after he retuirns.
- Fictional Tags
- Future Wars: the Third World War
- Post-Apocalyptic and Post-Holocaust Worlds
- Groupings
Variants
(2)
- La jetée, written and directed by Chris Marker (at movie theaters, France, 16 February 1962) [Accessed at Youtube on 28 February 2022.].
- La Jetée, written and directed by Chris Marker, [Accessed at Youtube on 28 February 2022.].
Derived Works
(2)
- 12 Monkeys by David Webb Peoples and Janet Peoples, directed by Terry Gilliam (8 December 1995).
- 12 Monkeys, Season 1, written by Terry Matalas, Travis Fickett, et al., directed by multiple people (16 January 2015).
Indexer Notes
(2)
- Credits—from the film:
- un photo-roman de Chris Marker
- Release—The format of the release on 16 February 1962 is unclear, although at least one site lists it as a theatrical release, but with no citation. Any theatrical release at that time was probably as a short that preceded a longer film. I miss movie shorts in theaters!