La Jetée (1962) - full transcript

This is the story of a man
marked by an image from his childhood.

The violent scene that upset him,

and whose meaning
he was to grasp only years later,

happened on the observation deck
at Orly Airport

a few years
before the outbreak of World War III.

Parents take their children to Orly
on Sunday to watch the departing planes.

Of this particular Sunday,

the child whose story
were about to tell

would long remember
the frozen sun,

the setting
at the end of the deck,

and a woman's face.



Nothing distinguishes memories
from ordinary moments.

Only later do they become memorable
by the scars they leave.

That face was to be
the only image from peacetime

to survive the war.

He often wondered
if he'd really seen it

or just invented
that tender moment

to counter the moments
of madness to follow.

The sudden roar,

the woman's gesture,

the crumpling body,

and the cries of the crowd,
blurred by fear.

Later he realized
that he'd seen a man die.

Soon afterwards,
Paris was destroyed.

Many died.



Some considered
themselves victors.

Others were taken prisoner.

The survivors settled in underground
passages beneath Chaillot.

Above ground, Paris,
like most of the world,

was uninhabitable,
riddled with radioactivity.

The victors stood guard
over a kingdom of rats.

Prisoners were subjected
to experiments

apparently of great concern
to those who conducted them.

The outcome was disappointment
for the experimenters,

and for the subjects,
either death

or madness.

One day they came to select a new
guinea pig from among the prisoners.

One day they came to select a new
guinea pig from among the prisoners.

He was the man whose story
we are now telling.

He was frightened.

He had heard
about the head experimenter

and was prepared
to face the mad scientist

or Dr. Frankenstein.

Instead, he found
a reasonable man

who calmly explained
that the human race was doomed.

Space was out of the question.

The only hope for survival
lay in time.

A loophole in time
might make it possible

to reach food, medicine, energy.

This was the aim
of the experiments:

to send emissaries into time

to summon past and future
to the rescue of the present.

But the human mind recoiled.

to wake up in another time

was to be born again,
as an adult.

The shock was too great.

After sending lifeless or unconscious
bodies into different time zones,

the inventors now focused on men
with powerful mental images.

If they could conceive of
or dream of another time,

perhaps they would be able
to enter into it.

The camp police spied
even on dreams.

This man was selected

due to his fixation
on an image from his past.

First, the present and all its supports
must be stripped away.

They start again.

The subject doesn't die

or go mad.

He suffers.

They continue.

On the tenth day,

images begin to well up
like confessions.

A peacetime morning.

A peacetime bedroom.
A real bedroom.

Real children.

Real birds.

Real cats.

Real graves.

On the 16th day,
he's on the observation deck.

It's empty.

Sometimes he finds
a day of happiness,

but it's a different one.

A happy face,
but it's a different one.

Ruins.

A girl who could be
the one he seeks.

He crosses her path
on the observation deck.

She smiles at him from a car.

Other images pour out
and mix

in a museum
that is perhaps his memory.

On the 30th day,
the meeting takes place.

This time he's sure
he recognizes her.

In fact, it's the only thing
he's sure of

in this timeless world
that amazes him with its riches.

All around him
are astonishing materials:

glass, plastic,

terry cloth.

When he shakes off
his fascination,

the woman has disappeared.

The experimenters
tighten their control

and send him back
on the trail.

Time rolls back again.
The moment returns.

This time he's close to her
and speaks to her.

She greets him without surprise.

They have no memories, no plans.

Time takes shape painlessly
around them.

Their sole landmarks
are the taste of the moment

and the markings on the walls.

Later they're in a garden.

He remembers
that there were gardens.

She asks him about his necklace,

the combat necklace he wore at the start
of the war that is to break out someday.

He makes up an explanation.

They stop before a redwood trunk
marked with historical dates.

She mentions a foreign name
he doesn't understand.

As in a dream, he points beyond
the tree trunk and hears himself say,

"That's where I come from"...

and falls back, exhausted.

Then another wave of time
lifts him up.

They probably give him
another shot.

Now she lies sleeping in the sun.

He thinks that,
in the time it took him

to return to her world,
she died.

She wakes up.
He speaks to her again.

The truth being
too fantastic to be believed,

he mentions only the essentials:
a distant land,

a long way to travel.

She listens and doesn't laugh.

Is it the same day?

He no longer knows.

They'll take countless walks
like this one,

and an unspoken trust
will grow between them,

trust in its purest form.

No memories, no plans,
until the moment he senses

a barrier ahead.

Thus the first set of experiments
came to an end.

It was the starting point
for a series of tests

in which he'd meet her
at different times.

He meets her a few times
before their markings on the walls.

She welcomes him simply.

She calls him her ghost.

One day she seems frightened.

One day she leans over him.

He never knows
whether he moves toward her

or is pushed,

whether he's made it all up
or is only dreaming.

Around the 50th day,

they meet in a museum
filled with ageless animals.

Now their aim is perfect.

They can aim him
at a given moment,

and he can stay there
and move around at ease.

She too seems to have adjusted.

She accepts the ways of this visitor
as a natural phenomenon,

how he comes and goes,
exists, talks,

laughs with her, falls silent,
listens to her,

and then vanishes.

Once back in the laboratory,

he sensed that something
had changed.

The camp director was there.

From what was said around him,

he gathered that after the success
of the experiments in the past,

they now meant
to launch him into the future.

His excitement
made him forget for a moment

that the meeting in the museum
was their last.

The future was better armored
than the past.

After several
even more grueling attempts,

he eventually caught
some waves of the world to come.

He crossed
a planet transformed...

with Paris rebuilt...

10,000 incomprehensible streets.

Others were waiting for him.

It was a brief encounter.

They clearly refused
this slag from another time.

He recited his lesson:

Since humanity had survived,

it couldn't refuse to its own past
the means of its own survival.

This sophism was taken
for fate in disguise.

They gave him a power unit

strong enough to set
all human industry in motion again.

Then the gates of the future
closed once again.

Shortly after his return,

he was transferred
to another part of the camp.

He knew his jailers
would not spare him.

He'd been a tool
in their hands.

His childhood image had served
as bait to train him.

He'd lived up to their expectations
and played his part.

Now he only waited
to be executed,

with the memory of a twice-lived
moment in time somewhere inside him.

Deep in this limbo, he received word
from the people of the future.

They too could travel through time,

and more easily.

There they were,

ready to accept him
as one of their own.

But he had a different request.

Rather than that pacified future,

he asked to be returned
to the world of his childhood

and that woman
who might be waiting for him.

Once again
on the observation deck at Orly...

on this warm Sunday before the war
where he could now stay,

he thought confusedly
how the child he'd been

must be there too,
watching the planes.

But first he sought out
a woman's face

at the end of the deck.

He ran toward her.

And when he recognized the man
who'd trailed him from the camp,

he realized there was
no escape from time,

and that that moment
he'd been granted to see as a child,

and that had obsessed him
forever after...

was the moment
of his own death.