Card Game - L'année dernière à Marienbad (1962) Discussion

[–] jgranade28 18 years ago

I liked the cinematography, the way the camera pans across the ornate architecture and so forth. And the card game. Whoever goes first is always going to win (or is it lose?). Either way, the winner is totally determined by the order of play unless you are an idiot. If you want to impress your friends and act like your taste in movies is sophisticated, then put this film in your top 10 list.

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[–] akin-2-grieve 18 years ago

This film is in my top ten.

Luckily my friends are decent people and like me for who I am rather than my 'sophisticated' taste in films.

So your comment really makes no sense to me.

Can you not accept that some people actually do love this film?

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[–] phillip-harrington 18 years ago

It doesn't depend on who starts. If you had watched the film you would know this. If you are not able to appreciate this film it is more an indicator on your own mental abilities than that of other peoples pretension.
It is a remarkable film that should not necessarily be watched by people who want to see a run of the mill "this happens, causes this and it ends this way" type of film.

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[–] kgenev 18 years ago

Yes it does matter who starts. It only means that the husband loses in the end. if you have 2 exprienced players, then the person who starts always loses. If you are facing an idiot, it does not matter waht turn you go.

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[–] jrglaves-smith 18 years ago

Surely the husband is the idiot. While he's gloating over his petty victory in this silly game someone's seducing his wife!

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[–] dotdashdash 11 years ago

Of course it matters who starts; in case of perfect play, the person who starts will always lose because no matter what he does, the other player will always be able to leave him with a number of objects that will, ultimately, leave a remainder of one. It's simple game theory, look forward and conclude your way backwards to the start of the game. In the film, M is able to win even when he lets the opponent go first (and, even more, he even lets the opponent decide which objects M takes on his first move); but that works only because the opponent doesn't know the perfect play algorithm that allows the second player to win.

And I belive, by the way, that the tone in your post is extremely rude. You're free, of course, to like or dislike the film, but this "I appreciate the film because I'm smart, and the fact that you didn't like it shows how much dumber you are" is condecending.

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[–] dotdashdash 11 years ago

Juts for the sake of completeness, here's a description of the winning algorithm: http://www.archimedes-lab.org/How_to_Solve/Win_at_Nim.html

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[–] mitlander 18 years ago

The game is called Nim, by the way.

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[–] 18 years ago

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[–] als34 17 years ago

I'm not sure how the game describes the movie.

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[–] 17 years ago

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[–] japuzzo-2 17 years ago

To elaborate on this, the game serves to abstractly illustrate X's verbal attempts at convincing A that he, indeed, had met her the previous year.

Each time the game is played, different combinations of cards or matchsticks are picked up, yet the man with the narrow face (let's call him "N") always wins, no matter if he begins the game or not.

Similarly, in each of X's verbal re-plays of his rendez-vous with A the previous year, his story unfurls in different ways: did they meet at Marienbad or at another resort hotel in a different city? Was she wearing a white negligee when he found her in her bedroom or not? Did she die? Did he rape her? Did she come to him willingly? She insists she does not remember, and his memory, too, falters, but the end result is always the same: she promised to meet him at Marienbad the following year to run away with him.

The act of memorization -- like the act of playing the card game -- does not matter, because X and A will always end up together in the end -- the same way N always wins the card game.

Though, like musicman17 says, understanding the whole film is a complex process; this is a rather lumbering explanation.

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[–] 17 years ago

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[–] tintin-23 17 years ago

Nim is a very simple game: nothing "complex" about it.

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[–] 17 years ago

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[–] clive-ihd 17 years ago

***spoiler***

The game of nim is for two players. The players have a number of matches(or cards, or gambling chips, or photographs, and in turn each player removes one or two matches, and the the person left with the last match is the loser.

But the number of matches is a number which when divided by three gives a remainder of one. So trick is to let your opponent go first, and if your opponent takes one match you take two, and vice versa. So on each pair of turns you remove three matches between you, which leaves one left at the end.

If you go first and your opponent knows the trick you can't win.

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[–] Rand-o 17 years ago

I was forced to watch this movie in my [E]nglish class...

Why on earth would you have to watch a French film in English class???

Broadway doesn't go for boooooze and dope!

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