Alain Resnais and Muriel

      I've seen Muriel (1963) thrice.  As with many, the first viewing left me baffled but interested in the film's editing style.  The second time I saw it, the plot stood out for me, I began to grasp the story.  The third time, I watched with a friend who, seeing it for the first time, was baffled, although she enjoyed it.

     The clothes, the objects, the look of Boulogne-sur-mer, a film shot on location in a city most viewers hadn't seen, with modern buildings amid the war's ruins.  Muriel glows with crisp imagery, rich color photography muted, not like a glossy Technicolor.  The images of the seaside city look immediate, the world of 1962 or 1963, the French-Algerian War just concluded, Godard's Le Petit Soldat, dealing with that war, finally released after being held back three years, censorship of subjects pertaining to France's terrible war in North Africa prevalent.

     War and lies, war and memory.  

     Muriel is a story, a memory, a torture victim of French soldiers, including Bernard, who participated in her beating, though his comrade Robert killed her.  Bernard has audiotape of this torture and killing.  He seeks to avenge Muriel, to kill the snide Robert, who lives in Boulogne-sur-mer, too.

     Bernard's mother, Helene (Delphine Seyrig), an antiques dealer with a gambling addiction, spending much of her money and borrowed money in a modernistic building housing a casino, entertains a past lover, Alphonse, a man resembling William Faulkner.  Likes to keep his coat on, spent time in Algiers on business, different impression of Algeria from Bernard's.

     Alphonse shows up with his "niece," but she's really a young actress.  The four main characters go through many abruptly shown set pieces, a dinner, a breakfast, outside walks, window shopping, socializing in cafes.  The action is shown fragmented.  The characters have no solid connections with each other.  Bernard is severely locked in on his own life.  He has a cute girlfriend who assists him with his filming and documenting but he remains obsessed with dead Muriel.

     Love, yearning all seen in the long shots of misty seascapes.

     The film is drenched in mystery enhanced by the editing style.  Time gets mixed, each of the main characters given much time to perform in partial scenes, fragments of get-togethers, brief shot of coffee drunk, someone peering into a shop window, traffic and slick rained-on surfaces.  The modern apartment buildings looking like models of complexes to be destroyed in a Godzilla movie.

     Postwar architecture, a city resembling a chipped away face.

     Huge, beautiful and mysterious port city, we never get a sense of its size, the layout of the town is lost always in mist.  Small drama, big stage, like the story of a girl captured by soldiers and put to death because she doesn't reveal something she doesn't know.

     A voice preserved on tape, the old type of machines.  Reels.  The Muriel Torture Death Reel.

     Ends up playing loudly at a crucial moment, several characters hear it, Bernard leaves, shoots Robert, leaves town, throws what looked to me like his Bolex camera into the sea from atop a high cliff, but my film buddy said it was the gun used to shoot and kill Robert.

     I think it was the Bolex sixteen millimeter film camera with the hand-cranked filming mechanism.

     The young man's personality leads him to want to document things.  He's a compiler.  He likes trying to add things up, so he films and tapes.  Alphonse and Ernest (brother of the wife Alphonse deserted) get into a clutch, fighting and enraged with each other, Bernard runs to his bedroom to get his Bolex.  He's that kind of person.

     So he also documented Muriel's torture and death, with a tape recorder, not with film.

     This film stirs up emotions connected to America's nineteen year no end in sight war.  Soldiers in an occupied country mistreating and killing civilians is common, it always happens.  American soldiers have been occupying Afghanistan since October 2001.  How many Afghans have been brutalized by tired, vicious killers who have no mission except to continue killing Afghans, for no reason, funded by American taxpayers.  France had its way with Algeria after having its way with Indochina, or Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia.  Occupying a country just mains the occupier is killing people.

     America and France go after many of the same places.  Must have something to do with natural resources, but that's crazy talk.  The movie Muriel is well worth seeing but know this going in: you will not understand it the first time you see it.  The second viewing clears up a lot, plot-wise.  It's best, maybe, to just let the rhythm of the editing guide you like the movie is a ride.  It's certainly a spectacle of creative editing.  It influenced my filmmaking years before I made films.  Seeing this a third time was a confirmation of my belief in the 1980s, having seen this film for the first time, on a big screen too, that Muriel is a masterpiece, the film echoing within itself, leading to the final masterful scene, Simone, Alphonse's estranged wife, arriving at Helene's rambling apartment, then walking through room after room, showing us the apartment's never before seen layout.  There's no one there.  

     I've revealed the ending, but no matter, your first viewing of this movie will baffle you a great deal.

     In 1963 critics didn't like it.  François Truffaut, by that time prominent with Jules et Jim, defended Resnais's film, the experimental style.  Henri Langlois, director of the Cinematheque Français, pointed out Muriel's unique editing style.

     Critics must be willing to put themselves out on a limb.  To be honest about what a film does to the viewer, and while watching, the critic is a viewer, just like the other viewers.  

Vic Neptune