I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

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).

Around the 1960's, Nouvelle Vague (or French New Wave) was starting to become famous, with incredible masterpieces like Hiroshima mon amour and The 400 Blows, the "main" directors (or at least the innermost)were called "The Right Bank Group from French New Wave" (Godard, Truffaut,Chabrol and Rohmer) and Godard called Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda and Chris Marker "The Left Bank Group from French New Wave" that somehow denigrated them for not being so intimate of directors like Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol and Rohmer, but actually the best and most influential films of the Nouvelle Vague actually came from the "Left Bank Group", movies like Hiroshima mon amour, Last Year at Marienbad and Cleo from 5 to 7 marked and changed the way of making films and most of them are recognized by this, especially Hiroshima mon amour, which used an innovative way the flashback and considered one of the most important and influential films in cinema history, and "La jetée" which inspired 12 Monkeys, is also considered one of the best short films ever made. World War III, The tale of a men which was sent to the past and future to find a solution to the world's fate, While he revives memories of the past with a woman he had loved and has a chance to love her again while he is on the past, he will have to choose between living the future or the past. The film is made of photographs, so there is no moving picture, but is more emotional than movies that have moving pictures, the tragic future, the loss of innocence, and other themes are constantly retreated in this short. In the end, the only thing that matters is the memory, not what we will live.

Directed by French film-maker, Chris Marker, La Jetee is a horribly dry and uninspired Sci-Fi story which takes place at the onset of WW3.There are no spectacular images in this film. There is no dialogue, either.La Jetee's story is told through tedious narration.There is no live action. It is all just b&w stills whose images are recycled more than once.Thank goodness La Jetee was only 27 minutes long (it seemed to drag on for hours).And thank goodness this sort of idiot concept of film-making didn't catch on.La Jetee's story is neither deep nor philosophical. Although I strongly suspect that director Marker believed himself to be creating a real masterpiece of cinematic intellectualism.For me, the only way to watch this dismally dreary picture was in fast-forward mode.

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.