Life Is A Picture

ChrisMarker’s La Jetée uses the concept of photography as a memory and of the process of living. His snippets are then used to show the larger context; as if life wasn’t a flow of motion but rather still frames captured in a consecutive way. It is almost as if Dziga Vertov critiqued La Jetée in his “Kino-Eye.” La Jetée was… "filmed in a way that sets out the relevant materials one after the other and forces the eyes of the audience to see the consecutive details that they must see. The film camera drags the eyes of the audience… in the most profitable order and it organizes the details into a regular montage exercise" (Kino-Eye. 92). Time traveling and memory are one in La Jetée. They both take place in his adult mind, but also in his childhood reality. The line is blurred between past and present as he is shown his own death.