La jetée

Literal: The pier English release: La Jetée

written and directed by Chris Marker

Release: 1962
Format: Short Film
Genres: Science Fiction, Experimental
Audience: Adults
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: French

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.

— Michael Main

Tel était le but des expériences : projeter dans le Temps des émissaires, appeler le passé et l’avenit au secours du présent.

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.

English

DEBUT

La jetée (at movie theaters, France, 16 February 1962).

VARIANTS

1 French variant

TRANSLATIONS

Translations to English

DERIVATIVE WORKS

12 Monkeys by David Webb Peoples and Janet Peoples, directed by Terry Gilliam, (premiered at an unknown movie theater, New York City, 8 December 1995).
12 Monkeys, Season 1 written by Terry Matalas, Travis Fickett, et al., directed by multiple people, (SyFy, USA, 16 January 2015 to 10 April 2015).

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Unspecified Future Year

Timeline Models

Single Static Timeline: An early example of a single static timeline in film.

Time Travel Methods

Hypnosis, 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.
Technology and Science from the Future: the power pack
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

Cited in Worlds Enough and Time, edited by Gary Westfahl ()

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY (SPOILERS!)

From an unspecified prisoner camp after the Third World War at an unknown time ⋙ to Orly airport and elsewhere around Paris before the war at an unknown time. Multiple round trips. Note: The prisoner takes fifty or more trips to allow the Director and his scientists to perfect their time travel mechanism.
From the same prisoner camp sometime later at an unknown time ⋙ to a future time after the world has recovered at an unknown time. Round trip. Note: The prisoner brings back a power pack .
From the same prisoner camp after the power pack has been brought back at an unknown time ⋙ to la jetée at Orly before the war at an unknown time. Note: The people of the future send the prisoner back to his most vivid memory on la jetée at Orly where his ultimate destiny plays out.

INDEXER NOTES (SPOILERS!)

Credits—from the film:
<ul class="bbcode_list" style="list-style-type:circle">
<li>un photo-roman de Chris Marker</li>
</ul>
Release—The format of the release on 16 February 1962 is unclear, although at least <a href='https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dvdizzy.com%2Flajetee-sanssoleil.html'>one site</a> 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!