1961: L'année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad)

Alain Resnais' follow-up to the magnificent Hiroshima mon amour is set in a castle now functioning as a hotel: a man is telling a woman about what they did when they met last year, while she keeps telling him she doesn't remember. Situated on the line between conventional narrative cinema and the pure surrealism of films like L'age d'or and possibly the best-photographed b/w film I've ever seen, the picture seems to be aimed not so much at being understood intellectually as at putting the audience in a trance-like state. Alternatively, you might dismiss it as pretentious artsy-fartsy crap (AFM 5!).

Is it going too far to say that in his less accessible films David Lynch did nothing but take Marienbad, add violence and put American pop culture references where Resnais' film uses European high culture? Yes, probably. (8.5)

(How to win the game in the film explained in German and French)