‘Sans Soleil‘ is a movie that is hard to fit in any category, same as its director Chris Marker (1921 – 2012) was a cinematic persona hard to characterize or place into a single shelve of the French film history. Marker’s film from 1983 was projected at our local cinematheque outside any series, but in reality it happily complements the retrospectives dedicated to Wim Wenders and Agnès Varda. The most appropriate genre for ‘Sans Soleil‘ would be travel documentary films, those ‘road movies’ in which Wenders excelled. Together with Varda and Alain Resnais he belongs to the so-called Left Bank (Rive Gauche) film group , a sub-current of the New French Wave distinct by its declared rejection of commercial cinema, permanent search for new artistic forms, and leftist political stance. Chris Marker, who began his biography in the Resistance and continued as a filmmaker in 1961 with a film that supported Fidel Castro and his regime in Cuba, continued throughout his film career until the last years of his life to experience and to be politically engaged. However he preferred to make cleat his politics in films, refusing interviews and hiding from publicity. Besides politics, he made interesting cinema, some of his films opened paths that inspired many other filmmakers. If we were to define his genre, it would be the cinematic essay. ‘Sans soleil’ is a successful example.
The soundtrack runs parallel to the projected images, and both have equal roles in this film by Chris Marker. The text is an apparent exchange of letters between a traveler in 1983 in Japan and an interlocutor traveling and filming in other parts of the world. In reality, both are the author’s alter-ego characters who maintain an imaginary dialogue about the world, cultures and their relationships, about people and loneliness, about novelty and tradition. Many topics are approached, and the dialogs are in many interesting moments. If we need to decide what the main theme should be, we should, I think, find it in the diversity of cultures, in the differences of approach, but also in the share feelings that bring together the inhabitants of the planet wherever they are. Do you remember Mondo Cane, the 1962 shocking documentary about the cruelty of the world? This would rather be a more optimistic ‘Mondo Umano’.
More than half of the images are filmed in Japan, which is traveled from north to south. Like many other visitors to Japan (I have also lived the same experience), Chris Marker is fascinated by the diversity of the landscapes and the cultural richness, by the combination of ultra-modern and tradition. Avoiding tourist sites, he tries to capture the everyday, even banal aspects of life, the Japanese traditions, their fascination for games and the adoration of animals. Of course, the ultra-modern of 1983 has retro nuances if we watch the movie in 2019, but this adds another dimension of comparison and further reflection to the permanent geographic comparison with sequences shot in Africa, France, Iceland. The only part of the film that seems less connected to the rest is the one filmed in San Francisco, a trip and an insight into the film ‘Vertigo‘ by Alfred Hitchcock. After all, if we consider this film as an essay, divagations are allowed in this literary and now cinematic genre.
‘Sans Soleil‘ deserves to be seen. It’s a captivating journey into space, time and cultures.