overcome them Marker uses them to speak of loss, of the patchy nature
of the imagination and the promise of redemption.^10 La Jetéeis not the
only film to have been made from stills, but it is perhaps the only one to
have understood the potential of the form so profoundly and exploited
it so well. As a result the film itself seems as outside of time as the story
it tells, as fresh today as it was in 1962. It belongs to no genre, has few
dateable traits and a hybrid grammar all its own.
One brief sequence ofLa Jetéeis moving footage. The hero is drugged
and in a dream state. First we see what he imagines in a series of languor-
ous dissolves between still images: he is remembering his lover. She too
is sleeping but restless. Suddenly she blinks repeatedly into the camera
in real time. A harsh cut to the still face of a scientist ends the shot before
we can be sure what we have seen. Marker offers us the moving image
right on the cusp between the stillness of sleep and the stirrings of
wakefulness. The woman’s blinking eyes mimic the shutter of the camera
or the gate of the projector and return our own surprise at the image
springing to life.
Something similar was at play in the films of Andy Warhol made
around the same time, such asSleep( 1963 ). But it wasKiss( 1964 ), a string
of three-minute shots of couples in almost motionless embrace, that
caused Irving Blum to question his vision. ‘I looked and looked and
looked and looked and looked and I said, “It’s a still. It’s not a motion
picture at all”... at one moment I remember Marisol blinking, and the
shockedresponse of everybody in the audience.’^11
ThePastRedefined