Alain Resnais-Toute la mémoire du monde (1956)

With Toute la mémoire du monde, Resnais is setting the basis of his cinematographic project about places of memory. Within 20 minutes, Resnais is surgically, methodically analyzing the national library of France. With an hyperactive camera, he's sneaking, he's smelling, he's feeling this huge building. IMDb




Very fast paced and organized movie that sets up more than ever, the cut between him and the other directors of the french new wave. In my humble cinephile opinion, Resnais is in a league of his own. IMDb




In particular, the relationship between past and present, and the function of memory as the mechanism of traversing temporal distance, are persistent preoccupations of Resnais's films. Other films from this period similarly reveal familiar themes and traits of Resnais's subsequent work. Toute la memoire du monde is a documentary about the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It presents the building, with its processes of cataloguing and preserving all sorts of printed material, as both a monument of cultural memory and as a monstrous, alien being. The film almost succeeds in transforming the documentary film into a branch of science fiction. FilmReference