Let the games begin! In the late 1960s, Alain Robbe-Grillet, the screenwriter of Alain Resnais’ immortal arthouse classic Last Year in Marienbad, and one of the key figures in avant-garde French literature, made two films in communist Czechoslovakia in cooperation with the surrealist writer, Albert Marenčin, then a film producer at Bratislava’s Koliba studios.
In The Man Who Lies, Boris (the great Jean-Louis Trintignant) arrives at the close of World War II in a remote village, where he spins a dizzying web of deceit concerning the fate of a local resistance hero – but to what end, and with what motivation?
Trintignant won the Silver Bear at the 1968 Berlinale for his mercurial performance, while Igor Luther’s high contrast black-and-white cinematography produces a stream of unforgettable imagery.
Discover more from author Alain Robbe-Grillet at Readings.
