La jetee

The notion of time

The notion of time is distorted, being divided into three temporal spaces: past-present-future.

These 3 temporal spaces are systematically intertwined during the experiment, having as central subject the protagonist, him having the same age he has in the present in all of the three temporal dimensions.

This traveling through time is possible due to the memories (past) and the imagination (future) of the protagonist (Davos Hanich)

His past is suggested through the meaning of an image he keeps returning to, an image of a woman he had seen on the boarding platform (the jetty) shortly before he witnessed the death of a man, whom subsequently was to be seen that it was him. This image belongs to his childhood, and until so far it is still a blurry image of what happened that moment. Since all he can remember is someone falling to the ground and hearing everybody screaming. Until the end, this memory will be uncertain for him and it will haunt him forever. In the end he understands why that image was so striking in his memory, being actually the scene of his death: the man killed was the future him, returned into his past due to an experiment carried in the present. Only in the end, these 3 dimensional are combined.

Into the past, due to the memory of the woman, memory which he kept vivid in his mind, he manages with the help of his own imagination to develop a romantic relationship with her (even though when he first saw her, he was a child, and she was a grown woman, now they have the same age).

The future is represented by a brief meeting of the protagonist with the technologically advanced people from the future who will give him a power unit which will help him save his destroyed society. Returning to the present, with this accomplished mission he had to carry out he was to be executed therefore he is offered the change to be kept and saved permanently into the future, but instead he requires to be sent into the past, in the moment of seeing the woman for the first time. There he finds her and while he is rushing towards her he is killed by one of the jailers of the present, and now the memory of the man falling on the ground becomes clear.

The present is so far the only temporal dimension which seems not to be affected by fluctuations, moreover the present is the one exploiting the past and the future of the subject. But it is also a fictional dimension for the viewers, since represents an aftermath of the Third World War. The present interferes in both the other dimensions, due to the experiments, which if they would put an end to it, the subject, the man, would not have the chance to "jump" from the past to the future and vice-versa.

From the beginning we know that the story is fictional, and as viewers we unconsciously agree to accept this juggling with the temporal dimensions.

The narrator

The narrative voice has multiple meanings. The main purpose is to "bind" to "homogenize" into a story the static images presented.

I tried an experiment and I watched the short film several times in several ways. I watched it first on mute, without sounds, and I understood less than 30% of it. Afterwards I`ve only listened to it, only the voice and I understood 80% of it. Therefore, overlapping the narrative voice with the images is constructing an ensemble which cannot exist if these two components (voice-sound/ image) would exist independently. The narrative voice helps also in filling the gaps in understanding the action.

In time, the narrative voice had been removed from the cinematographic productions, being replaced by the moving images which were explaining the action. In the present case I believe imperative the existence of the narrator.

It replaces the dialogues, the explanations given by the moving images and builds a storyline. It is, here and there, replaced, or it disappears. This happens in certain moments:

- The whispered German dialogues between the experimenters

- Are heard the heart bits of the subject of the experiment

- The images are flowing in cascade with fade-in/fade-out effects being sustained underneath by the musical ambient.

What I noticed is that the narrative voice does not have emotional involvement, the vocal timbre does not change, suggesting a support towards any of the sides.

Technically speaking is overlapping perfectly with the images are presenting, suggesting therefore the necessity of its existence in understanding the subject of the action. It is also needed and responsible for the incipit, introducing us into the story and for the elucidating the end.