Alain Resnais

(http://www.listal.com/viewimage/1313434)

My first encounter with the movies of Alain Resnais was in the first mid of the 1960's. I was in college, studying to become an engineer, and I was often going in the evenings at the Students' Culture House, near the Bucharest Opera. By that time the Culture House was named after one of the important figures of the Communist regime in Romania, Grigore Preoteasa. As it happens, for us, young students eager for places with dance and fun, there was no connection between the name and the personage, rather something like, where are you going tonight? well, I don't know, maybe at Preoteasa, they say it's a French movie and then it's dance.

So it was at Preoteasa that I saw two of Resnais's movies: L'année dernière à Marienbad and Hiroshima Mon Amour, each one followed by discussions between us. We were young and naturally we believed that one hour of discussions would clarify everything, what troubled memory meant, and what Nouvelle Vague meant, and how to link Godard, Resnais, Truffaut, Malle, Proust, Robe-Grillet and Marguerite Durras. This was culturally pretty intensive, to be honest, the good thing was that after discussions dance followed.

Well, today in the morning I watched a documentary made by Resnais: Nuit et Brouillard, and I had somehow the feeling of closing a loop. My first encounter was in the first mid of the sixties, now I am in the second mid of my sixties. I owe you anyway to comment the two movies that I saw fifty years ago.

• Van Gogh (1948)
• Night and Fog (1955)

(Cinéma Français)