THE FIFTH SHOT OF LA JETÉE
(The Museum of Moving Image’s First Look Festival runs March 12-16. Chrck out Jonathan Marlow’s movie review of The Fifth Shot of La Jetée. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
“We’re entertaining ghosts now.”
One year to the day-and-hour of the U.S. debut of Kurba Mikurda’s astonishing SOLARIS MON AMOUR in the midst of an earlier edition of this event, we find another “First Look” premiere on our shoreline of the Atlantic that is—essentially—an exegesis about a film yet—literally—an irresistible study of visual-archeology involving one of the greatest examples of court métrage (and, in a later iteration and most naturally, ciné-roman) in existence.
Even viewers with little interest in so-called “experimental” or “avant-garde” films are drawn to LA JETÉE [THE JETTY or THE PIER]. For some, it is hardly considered a “motion-picture” at all, given that all-but-one of its sequences are comprised of still-photographs with narration. Like Raúl Ruiz’s DOG’S DIALOGUE (1977), it demonstrates what can be accomplished within limited means.
Genre-wise, LA JETÉE is merely a speculative-fiction short about the complications of time-travel. It is, additionally, a political film about travel in general: the titular jetty / pier overlooks an airport and many of the onlookers pictured in the film are, uncoincidentally, observing the arrival of Algerian immigrants arriving at Orly following the North Africa country’s independence from French colonial rule. In a remarkable and, initially, unfathomable coincidence, the cousin of filmmaker Dominique Cabrera becomes convinced that one of the stills in the film, photographed from behind, is a quasi-silhouette of himself as a child with his parents. What are the odds? Therein, within the twilight of its participants, Cabrera unravels an improbable enigma of the true identities of these pictured individuals, interviewing various folks involved—or, in their absence, in dialogue with their relatives—in Chris Marker’s concurrently-filmed LA JOLI MAI (itself, an extraordinary political documentary) and unearthing the original contact-sheets for the photographs used in the assemblage of LA JETÉE.
For a documentary that is nearly four-times-longer than its titular source, one could imagine (although one would be mistaken) that it is too much material for too little of an investigation. Is the picture of her cousin and his parents or isn’t it? Shouldn’t be a difficult question to resolve, seemingly? Thankfully, Dominique Cabrera evokes the tendencies of Marker himself to meander from the core concern, commingling excerpts from SAN SOLEIL [SUNLESS], A GRIN WITHOUT A CAT and LEVEL FIVE (among other works) to illustrate a grander purpose. What is LA JETÉE, truly, and why does it continue to inspire viewers six decades later? What is the enduring appeal of a tragic, semi-dystopian tale of love across time?
Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve [aka Chris Marker] is principally remembered as a filmmaker but he began his artistic career as a writer for Esprit. Through his assorted efforts of poetry and criticism, he was hired by Éditions du Seuil as the editor, designer and photographer for the travel series Petite Planète [Small Planet]. To this day, these editions of country-specific publications—with cover-photographs by Marker—are highly coveted (and a poster depicting the series from 1954 to 1964 has repeatedly surfaced in the homes of more friends and acquaintances than I’d care to count). It was his forays into filmmaking, however, that tend to be shared and discussed more than the rest, with LA JETÉE the best-known and most-celebrated among them. Undoubtedly, the secretive, rarely-photographed Marker was an extraordinary collaborator, working on various occasions with Alain Resnais, Walerian Borowczyk, Pierre Lhomme, Santiago Álvarez, François Reichenbach, Tom Luddy and Lynne Sachs, among others. These collaborations are each unique and yet unmistakably Marker-esque. As a ciné-essayist, he was unrivaled. From what I have been told, he was exceptional as a person as well.
It was in his spirit of collaboration that, in 2011, I joined with film-curator / filmmaker Liz Keim to honour Marker’s ninetieth birthday at the Exploratorium (in its former San Francisco location near the Palace of Fine Arts, a holdover of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition) with a screening of shorter works (sans LA JETÉE) and a birthday cake for all in-attendance. In appreciation, Marker sent me—by-way-of our mutual friend, Tom Luddy—a celebratory-captioned illustration of Guillaume-en-Égypte, his omnipresent cat-avatar. Catvatar? One year later, Marker was gone, yet his influence is perhaps more substantial than ever.
With THE FIFTH SHOT OF LA JETÉE, filmmaker Dominique Cabrera not only dissects a short film but dives deeply into feature-length on a single image, the FIFTH SHOT of the title. One might suggest that a compelling film could be made from nearly any image within LA JETÉE. You wouldn’t, on the surface, imagine that the mere fifth would have a particular resonance across the entirety of LA JETÉE. Yet it could be specifically argued that FIFTH SHOT… has resonance across the entirety of FIRST LOOK. It is a film that sticks in the memory like its illustrious source, each layer revealing something more complex beneath. In a peculiarly optimal decision, Cabrera does not crowd the screen with various attributions. Individuals appear and start speaking but their identity only becomes clear in context as they gradually reveal themselves through their comments. This alone makes for an enriching mystery for anyone willing to pay attention.
Yet another one-among-many illuminating presentation for FIRST LOOK 2025 and the Museum of the Moving Image, arguably the most rewardingly-programmed event in all of original thirteen colonies.
[With perpetual gratitude to FIRST LOOK publicist Sylvia Savadjian for her ever-persistent and prescient recommendations.]
— Jonathan Marlow (@aliasMarlow)
2025 First Look Festival; FIFTH SHOT OF LA JETÉE (2024) dir. Dominique Cabrera [104min.]
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