A man
tells a woman that they have met before - that they became lovers but then
agreed to separate for a year. The year is now up, and he has come back for
her. At first, she remembers nothing, but as he relates their past together,
real or imaginary, snapshots of memory appear - and she begins to believe
him. As more details begin to re-emerge from the woman’s mind, the reader is
shunted backwards and forwards between the past and the present, the actual
and the illusory, that which is seen and that which is only glimpsed and
guessed at.

The director Alain Resnais was already famous for films such as Hiroshima,
Mon Amour when he asked Alain Robbe-Grillet - the author of several seminal
novels, including Jealousy and The Voyeur, and the leader of the Nouveau
Roman school - to write a script for him. The result was Last Year at
Marienbad, a film that, as well as winning the Golden Lion at the 1961 Venice
Film Festival, has enthralled the critics, fascinated the public and become
one of the greatest cult classics of modern cinema.