My list of favorite comics-inspired movies would include the first two Superman films, the first two X-Men, Batman Returns, Spider-Man 2, Ghost World, the 1980 Flash Gordon, and Last Year at Marienbad.

That last one again?

If you were around in 1961 and an arthouse devotee, Last Year at Marienbad (oh, let’s get that title out in the original French, and pronounce it as best we can: L’Année dernière à Marienbad) was all the rage. In its day, the various card and matchstick games played in the film enjoyed a brief vogue, as did the “Marienbad look” established by co-star Delphine Seyrig, with her bird-like Chanel creations and a severely bobbed coiffure (fashioned not for posterity but to cover up hair damage). A two-disc Criterion Collection DVD, as nicely tricked-out as the film, lets us relive the moment.

You may not have seen Last Year at Marienbad but you’ve caught glimpses of it, in numerous other films. The hotel setting, the glorious gliding camerawork, and the time bending instantly recall The Shining. Synecdoche, New York, where theater director Philip Seymour Hoffman compartmentalizes his entire life history in a warehouse space, has an echo or two through its rabbit warrens of rooms. Pretty much any movie that messes with our head by toying with the clock, including Memento, the Spanish film Open Your Eyes, and its memento Vanilla Sky, owes a debt to director Alain Resnais and writer Alain Robbe-Grillet for blazing the path. Blur liked it enough to recreate it for its 1994 single “To the End,” from Parklife: (more…)