Muriel (1963)

Muriel is a French film first released in 1963, directed by Alain Resnais.  The film stars Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kérien, Nita Klein, Jean-Baptiste Thierrée and Claude Sainval.  It has also been released under the title: Muriel, or the Time of Return.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


Hélène lives in the French sea town of Boulogne with her step-son Bernard, running an antiques business from her apartment.  One day, she invites a former lover, Alphonse, to visit her.  He turns up, with a much younger woman who pretends to be his niece but who is in fact his mistress.  As Hélène tries to re-kindle past memories with Alphonse, Bernard is still haunted by his recent experiences of military service in Algeria...

Widely regarded as one of Alain Resnais’ greatest films, Muriel is perhaps the most perfect distillation of the themes of time, place and memory which dominate most of the director’s works.  Noticeably less abstract that his previous two films, which cover similar ground, (Hiroshima mon amour and L’Année dernière à Marienbad), Muriel is set in a world we can all recognise, with characters we can all identify with.   As a consequence, the film has an immediacy and relevance which possibly his earlier films (whilst still being undisputed masterpieces) possibly lacked.

Muriel is mainly concerned with two characters – a lonely middle-aged widow, Hélène (magnificently portrayed by Delphine Seyrig), and her traumatised step-son Bernard.   Both characters live in a present that is strongly influenced by the past and both expend a great deal of time and energy in trying to alter that past.  Whilst Hélène’s past has become a fantasy (as she discovers when she compares notes with her ex-lover Alphonse), Bernard’s past, more recent, is a living nightmare, scarred by memories of the atrocities he committed whilst serving in Algeria (including the brutal torture of a girl named Muriel).  Bernard attempts to alter his past by repeatedly watching a film of his army life he made whilst in Algeria and by gathering "evidence" to justify his current state of mind.  He is no more successful than his step-mother, whose last-ditch bid to return to the past is ultimately thwarted when she turns up at a disused railway station.

As in many of Resnais’ films, the location plays a paramount role in the film.  Here, the town of Boulogne-sur-mer is the perfect setting for a film where past memories intrude continually on the present consciousness.   In the haste to rebuild the town after the devastating bombings of World War II, the town planners created an uncomfortable melange past and present, picturesque old streets surrounded by ugly new development.   No town could better encapsulate the film’s meaning nor provide a more stark visual metaphor.  Like the confused memories of Hélène and Bernard, Boulogne is a place where past and present sit uncomfortably side-by-side.

Muriel is an immeasurably fascinating and complex film which requires at least three or four viewings to appreciate its genius and subtlety.  Resnais is magnificently served not just by his cast of actors (who give fine performances throughout) but also his technical crew.  Beautifully filmed (this being Resnais’ first colour film) and cleverly scripted by Jean Cayrol (who previously worked with Resnais on his documentary short Nuit et brouillard), Muriel is unquestionably one of the most extraordinary cinematic achievements of the Twentieth Century.

© James Travers 2002

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Although the cinema is considered an art of the masses and was fundamentally created  to serve as an entertainment, works like Alain Resnais’ Muriel serve a different purpose, to involve a well-disposed spectator in a complex but fascinating epistemological experience.  I want to refer, as an example, to two scenes from the film, which, in my opinion, invite us to participate in that process. 

At the beginning, Hélène (Delphine Seirig) has to go to the train station to meet Alphonse, her guest, an old lover she has not met for years.  She arrives too late, the train has left and there are no more passengers.  She sees only a station employee, who cannot help her.  A short time later, Alphonse appears, emerging from a nearby bar where he was awaiting her arrival.  In the background, we hear the rumble of a train and see a vague image of it passing. The meeting occurs outside the station.  Before the last sequence of the film, Hélène runs to the same station in the hope of preventing the departure of her stepson, who is trying to get away from the consequences of his crime.  On the platform, there are no passengers and no sign of a train.  The same employee that Hélène met some days ago informs her that the train to Paris now departs from another station.  The spectator does not see a train or passengers waiting, because in this film places and objects do not fulfil their regular functions. 

Similarly, Hélène’s apartment isn’t so much a home as an antiquarian shop, a place where furniture and ornaments are assembled without a sense of permanence or belonging.  The haunted stepson, Bernard, says, enigmatically, that every time we wake up, we wake up to begin another period of our life.  All of the characters live in a state of temporal and spatial disorientation.  The spectator is haunted by the elusive and surprising film editing, where day and night can be simultaneous, and where the dialogue is not always synchronized with the images of the people speaking the words.  The film ends with the camera locked onto a room in the house, a room without its inhabitants, just numerous objects that are waiting in vain for an owner.  The place is not the expected place, the time is not the expected time...

Adam Gai (Israel) 

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