At the core of "Sans Soleil," it seems, is the way society chooses to remember things -- and what happens when assumptions are replaced by new facts and a new reality. If this sounds (to use a 1960s expression) "far out," that's because "Sans Soleil" does what few other nonfiction films have done before or since: Link disparate cultures (in this case, Japan, Iceland, Guinea- Bissau and the United States) through street scenes that range from the mundane ("banality," in Marker's on screen words) to the extraordinary.
One example: Marker shows sleeping Japanese passengers on a ferry, then a subway framed by Tokyo's skyline, then a bird walking serenely on water, then an African woman smiling, then a cat temple in Japan where families pray for felines. "We do not remember -- we rewrite memory much as history is rewritten," says the film's erudite narrator as she reads a letter supposedly written by Sandor Krasna. In truth, Krasna is actually Marker, who invented the person of Krasna to ... well, it's anyone's guess because Marker doesn't give interviews and prefers to let his work speak for itself. Here's one guess:
Marker, who's never seen in "Sans Soleil," doesn't want to take full credit for a film that draws from so many displays of public rituals.
Like Edward Steichen's "The Family of Man" photography project, "Sans Soleil" captured lives and moments that were ordinarily overlooked -- though instead of a team of photojournalists, it was just Marker who roamed various continents for the material in this unforgettable movie. Few other filmmakers but Marker would travel to the outskirts of Guinea-Bissau, take pictures of working-class people, then juxtapose the footage with a rolling commentary about the country's revolution that toppled Portuguese rule. That revolution inspired revolutionaries in Europe, but as Marker dryly notes, "Who remembers all that? History throws its empty bottles out the window." In reading Marker's lines, actress Alexandra Stewart ("Exodus," "Day for Night") cites everyone from the Japanese poet Basho to Marlon Brando. (Marker's footage of San Francisco was inspired by Hitchcock's "Vertigo.")
One example: Marker shows sleeping Japanese passengers on a ferry, then a subway framed by Tokyo's skyline, then a bird walking serenely on water, then an African woman smiling, then a cat temple in Japan where families pray for felines. "We do not remember -- we rewrite memory much as history is rewritten," says the film's erudite narrator as she reads a letter supposedly written by Sandor Krasna. In truth, Krasna is actually Marker, who invented the person of Krasna to ... well, it's anyone's guess because Marker doesn't give interviews and prefers to let his work speak for itself. Here's one guess:
Marker, who's never seen in "Sans Soleil," doesn't want to take full credit for a film that draws from so many displays of public rituals.
Like Edward Steichen's "The Family of Man" photography project, "Sans Soleil" captured lives and moments that were ordinarily overlooked -- though instead of a team of photojournalists, it was just Marker who roamed various continents for the material in this unforgettable movie. Few other filmmakers but Marker would travel to the outskirts of Guinea-Bissau, take pictures of working-class people, then juxtapose the footage with a rolling commentary about the country's revolution that toppled Portuguese rule. That revolution inspired revolutionaries in Europe, but as Marker dryly notes, "Who remembers all that? History throws its empty bottles out the window." In reading Marker's lines, actress Alexandra Stewart ("Exodus," "Day for Night") cites everyone from the Japanese poet Basho to Marlon Brando. (Marker's footage of San Francisco was inspired by Hitchcock's "Vertigo.")