The Spiral of Time: Memory, Temporality and Subjectivity in Chris Marker’s La Jetée’

Focusing on Chris Marker’s seminal avant garde short La Jetée, the article considers the film’s treatment of the themes of time, memory and power and Marker’s continuing preoccupation with these questions in his filmmaking. Following a broadly Deleuzian trajectory the argument the article begins by exploring the way Marker’s montage of photo-stills serve to articulate the question of temporality and memory and ultimately to construct a mode of fragmented subjectivity. The importance of the fissures or intervals in the film- moments of non-representation- is given particular emphasis and, it is argued, are integral to the ‘damaged’ memory of the protagonist of this dystopian science fiction narrative and the article reveals how the situation of the protagonist allegorises the subject position of the cinematic spectator. The article goes on to explain how the theme of memory is tied to the allusive and many facetted relationship the film has to its source material.