- published: 25 Apr 2014
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La jetée is a 1962 French science fiction featurette by Chris Marker. It is also known in English as The Jetty or The Pier. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. The film runs for 28 minutes and is in black and white. It won the Prix Jean Vigo for short film.
The 1995 science fiction film 12 Monkeys was inspired by, and takes several concepts directly from, La jetée.
A man (Davos Hanich) is a prisoner in the aftermath of the Third World War, in a destroyed, post-apocalyptic Paris where survivors live underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries. Scientists research time travel, hoping to send test subjects to different time periods "to call past and future to the rescue of the present". They have difficulty finding subjects who can mentally withstand the shock of time travel, but eventually settle upon the prisoner, whose key to the past is a vague but obsessive memory, from his pre-war childhood, of a woman (Hélène Chatelain) he had seen on the boarding platform ('the jetty') at Orly Airport shortly before witnessing a startling incident there. He had not understood exactly what happened, but remembered someone falling to the ground and people screaming.
A man and his youth
You are who you were
Men in white, whispers in the dark
You are who you were
Moscow in my ear whispering fear
Paris burns underground
Paris sleeps just underground
So tie me down
Send me away from here
When nothing makes sense but stilling memories in your head
Let me go, find a way on our own
But, just wait for me with hair-in-wind
Hands-in-teeth, for nothing else
Hey maker, I think I was meant for this
A frozen sun, a woman's face are all I have, are all I need
You were who you were then we met in the silence and peace
You're quiet, eyes are tame
So tie me down
Send me away from here
When nothing makes sense but stilling memories in your head
Let me go, find a way on our own
But, just wait for me with hair-in-wind
Hands-in-teeth, for nothing else
I can't save you
You can't save me
Take your peacetime needs, let go of me
Take your peacetime hopes and bury them
Take your peacetime love and marry her
Take your peacetime wants and tie me down
Take your peacetime life and reassess
Take your peacetime hopes and swallow hard
Take your peace time thoughts and all of your peacetime memories
And don't tell a soul
So tie me down, send me away from here
When nothing makes sense but getting way from here
Let me go, find a way on our own