Last Year at Marienbad (Blu-ray)

Winner of the Golden Lion at the 1961 Venice Film Festival, Last Year at Marienbad is a hypnotically beautiful puzzle box of a film, and one of the most influential in history. Alain Resnais’s sensuous tracking shots and Delphine Seyrig’s iconic Chanel gowns have become part of the cinematic lexicon, and can now be seen in a gorgeous restoration from StudioCanal. In a large international hotel in the European resort town of Marienbad, with a sumptuous but austere décor—a marble universe with gold paneling, statues, and stiff servants—the rich, anonymous clientele circulates. A man (Giorgio Albertazzi) is convinced he met an enigmatic woman (Seyrig, Jeanne Dielman) the previous year at the same location, and perhaps had a flirtation. A second man (Sacha Pitoëff, Inferno), possibly the woman’s lover or husband, repeatedly intimidates the first man. Their relations unfold through flashback shards that never quite fit into place, their lives a hall of mirrors that never reflect a true self.