Excellent, Without a doubt!!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This modest little film, made up almost entirely of still photography (there is one brief sequence of motion which you will miss if you blink), also happens to be the inspiration for the film and television series "Twelve Monkeys". This I did not realize when I started watching it recently for the first time. Only at the end did I realize that it is the same concept as "Twelve Monkeys" and suddenly remembered hearing that "Monkeys" is based on a 1960s French film.This "movie" (its "movement" is truly illusory even if it is an effective illusion) is affecting and the denouement is worth waiting for (and, besides, the whole piece is only 28 minutes long).The title, "La Jetee", has interesting connotations. The literal meaning of this title is "The Pier", but the average English speaker might not know that airport architecture uses this term, which is taken over from seaports. You usually see signs for "terminals" and not "piers" in airports, but "pier" is more or less what is meant by "terminal" even though there is supposed to be a difference between the two terms. What is interesting historically is that because the film was made in the early 1960s, the pier at Orly Airport, which is near Paris, is an open-air pier where both passengers and their well-wishers can watch the planes load and unload both baggage and passengers. This is no longer possible because terminals now tend to be entirely enclosed and only passengers are allowed to reach the departure point. In more ways than one, watching this movie is a kind of time travel. In it, the pivotal scene takes place outdoors whereas, by the time "Twelve Monkeys" was made in the 1990s, the scene had to be done inside an airport terminal. Also, in the first scene, if you look at the airport tarmac as viewed from the pier, you will see planes with the tail-markings of two airlines that no longer exist, TWA (ceased doing business in 2001) and PanAm (ceased in 1991).

"La Jette" is a strange short film, that many are familiar to the fact that it inspired the Terry Gilliam film "12 Monkeys". It centers on the hypothetical aftermath of World War III. It is assumed that the world had been scorched by nuclear weaponry, as we see a young man strapped down and blindfolded by a group of ominous scientists in an underground refuge. What the man is being subjected to is a time machine that sends him back to the time, and his mission is to collect goods, and send them back to the present day in order to feed the survivors of the war. He is sent back to the near moment when his life ended, and all he remembers seeing is a strikingly beautiful young woman, standing over a pier while an unknown man falls to his death. Instead of following orders, the man stalks the female throughout the city of Paris, in order to figure out why he remembers her, and what significance she has to him before the bomb hit. What happens is quite lovely actually. You see, the man begins to talk to the young woman, and they begin a pleasant Parisian love affair. Needless to say, this makes the underground scientists none too pleased. For several times over, the scientists keep sending the man back to the beginning of the time warp in order to complete the mission, only for the man to keep pursuing the young lady every time. The two inter-dimensional lovebirds even manage to squeeze in a museum visit, where they gaze at the wonders of the animal kingdom. Hey, even in a time warp, you have to stop and smell the roses. After many attempts, the scientists play a trick and send the young man to a strange, scary future that warns him of the consequences of a malnourished society. The people where black clothing, and stare deeply into his eyes. Do you think that would scare him into doing the right thing? Of course not! He's got to get the girl. Angry about his failure, the scientists bring him back to the past, to meet the girl, only to have him assassinated by another time traveler. In the end, he suffered the exact same fate as the man he saw before the war. He was the fallen man from his own past. All this is shown in glorious frames per second… no not 24, just frames. Like a slideshow gone horribly wrong, the story progresses through images, which coincide with the fact that Marker himself is an acclaimed photographer. Does it even matter in the end? Not for me. I was deeply invested in every moment of this great short film. As a matter of fact, in the genre of Science Fiction, I don't think I've ever seen a finer film. Marker masterfully places fear in the hearts of his viewers. Whatever future we have to look forward to, it looks awfully bleak for Marker. There is nothing to look forward to, but the imminent arrival of a nuclear holocaust. As with many films in tune with "Nouvelle Vague", the politics are visibly liberal. "La Jette" is an early anti-war picture. In the wake of WWII, and the arms race happening in Europe, Marker constructed a film that allowed us to think about the social and physical implications of nuclear war. In the process, he allows an intimate look at the past, and how our main character, keeps trying to hang onto it as long as he can, for tomorrow is hopeless. The woman he seeks is in itself, a metaphor for peace and good memories. Good memories are precious, and beautiful, and visceral. When you think about good memories, you want to plant yourself back in time and relive them. We sympathize with our main character, and we feel for him when he dies in the end. I believe the moral of it all is to remember what thrived before, and try to prevent what this film tried to envision for our future, which consists of nothing.

The film is best known for being the basic idea of "12 Monkeys"."La Jetée" is one of the more special that I've ever seen. A short film (30 mins long) that is in reality a series of images with a narrative voice in the background. It tells the story of an experiment in time travel after a nuclear war, but The story at the end is not so important in the overall pictureThe relentless succession of frames with the thrill of having to wait until the next scene change makes it really effective.I must say that in a sense I was shocked after seeing him. I consider this film a masterpiece 9/10

Straight out of the twilight zone era of the early-'60s when the world came it closest (many times, as it turns out) to apocalyptic destruction, and so many Hollywood thrillers -- both highbrow and down-market -- enjoyed a mournful creepiness that just worked, came this French short, only 28 minutes long, about a post-WW3 earth in which scientific experiments underneath the catacombs of Paris are being conducted into human memory in order to access it in some way to achieve contact of a kind with the future.Comprised only of frozen freeze frames -- except for one brief, subtle yet heart-stopping moment -- LA JETEE offers up some of the most haunting cinema ever captured. With the museum sequence its timeless centerpiece.The music score, the imagery, the face of eternity that was the '60s.It must be said, however, that the original version of LA JETEE with french narration (and English subtitles) is the way to go. In recent years, however, a new version with English narration has circulated -- the problem being that the new narration is done very poorly, taking the picture out of the correct place and time somehow... This new version was probably done to make the film "more accessible" but does so to obtain a mainstream audience LA JETEE is never going to get anyway.LA JETEE is a classic must-see....But, as is the case with anything -- or anyone -- who is truly special, the regiment out their who hate it are deeply committed to their hatred of it. And such is the case with LA JETEE.