the audience applauded

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Pseudo-intellectuals will rave about the deep, esoteric, hidden meanings of what they consider to be an art film classic. Nonsense! This movie is a ridiculous piece of piffle that goes nowhere, says nothing, is merely a kind of experiment in pointless mental meanderings, like an LSD trip gone wrong. Big hit down in The Village in New York, among "beatnik" types who lauded it to the skies. My goodness! How pitiful. Providing you can stand suffering extreme boredom, you may wish to watch the flick, to see for yourself what the effete fuss is all about; you may even have a chuckle or two at the utter banality of it. Good luck.

I saw this when I was a teenager and didn't know what the fuss was about and had a feeling it was pandering to people who like to think they are clever ... I watched it again last night, 40 years later as I thought maybe I was too young and had missed something ... I hadn't Good Points ... Its quite nicely filmed, but how could you go wrong in such sumptuous surroundings ... Delphine Seyrig was an amazingly interesting and beautiful woman, although she hasn't reached her peak in this ... There are no more good points The writing and direction are both stilted and heavy handed in their determination to be obtuse ... Their arrogance and self importance literally drips off the screen ... Compare this to the films of Cocteau who was a true talent ... Unfortunately some films have always been bolstered by the faux intellectual bourgeoisie and this is one of the major players in that category ... It is of course complete and utter nonsense

The highly acclaimed movie, Last Year at Marienbad, directed by Alain Renais, is an unconventional and uncomfortable movie for the viewers that are used to a coherent narrative.The obsession with having uninteresting characters reciting poetry is a failed attempt to make this movie intellectually profound or meaningful.If all of this were not enough, for approximately 90 minutes, the viewer is haunted by the music from an organ that makes this cinematic experience an endless nightmare.I couldn't get any kind of excitement, just a great feeling of frustration in the end, not only because it's a difficult experience to understand but because it's extremely irrelevant.

Recently deceased French auteur Alain Resnais' second full-length feature after the groundbreaking Hiroshima MON AMOUR (1959), and LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, the Golden Lion winner in Venice, equally breaks the norms of conventional cinematic language, a trompe l'oeil obscures reality and illusion, Resnais conducts a simultaneous but disparate parallel of our protagonist's genteel voice-over (or soliloquy) narrative and the black-and-white mis en scène on which we are mesmerisingly hooked.It is a story adapted from Nouveau Roman trend pioneer Alain Robbe-Grillet, a monotonous opening monologue repeats itself while the panning camera steadfastly examining a resplendent baroque château, where it stops in a still tableau of the hotel's elegantly-dressed guests expressionlessly gazing at a play. Then X, an Italian man (Albertazzi) encounters A, a brown-hair woman (Seyrig), and he tells her they have met in the same hotel one year ago, but A seems to be oblivious about it.Ambiguity is the strength and kernel of the film, from its awe-inspiring chiaroscuro credited by its DP Sacha Vierny, to the mathematical Nim game, enigmatic aura suffuses in the majestic but stiff building, X's fervid emotion slowly thaws A's reluctant glacier, it is her attitude spellbinds our attention and propels the progress of the story, Delphine Seyrig is classy, vulnerable and incomprehensible as the film per se, "leave me alone, please" is her knee-jerking response to X's pleading, which like an eternal spell cast on the puzzle. Giorgio Albertazzi is suave, determined, and impassioned to win her over, his dulcet yet soporific voice adeptly puts viewers into a trance-like voyage, like a specter roaming in the maze-like château. The (possible) truth slowly discloses that one year earlier, X and A had an affair in the hotel, they agreed a year later, they would elope from A's dispassionate (may or may not be) husband M (Pitoëff), who repeatedly prevails X in the Nim games. There is the intrusive church organ music constantly reminding us what we watch is an oratorio rather than an immoral adultery, X's verbose sentiment and A's pithy response conjures up an otherworldly entanglement so arbitrarily clichéd, glosses over the center element and borders on affected unconventionality, self-indulged artifice. But its one-of-a-kind visual palette and art production, top-notch tableau vivant, nippy camera movement, unpredictable editing, are all irresistible for film aficionados, it is a magic wonderland to profess how cinema can do wonders, how it can defy any categorization and being equivalently enthralling, it is a godsend and Resnais did establish some genuine work tough to beat for any late comers.