In a career spanning over sixty years, Alain Resnais (1922-2014) proved an inexhaustible explorer of the complex relationships between time and memory, truth and the subjectivity of the human mind. Intellectually rigorous, his films nonetheless remain immensely watchable, buoyed by a lightness of touch and a sheer beauty that effortlessly communicates the dreamlike interior of the mind.

Resnais began his film career immediately after World War II, directing innovative and wide-ranging documentaries and film essays before transitioning to narrative features at the end of the 1950s. His earliest feature films often reflect the impact of the Cold War and anti-colonial period on French society, but his initial success, Last Year at Marienbad, points the direction that much of his later work would take: experimental narratives that disrupt the smooth linearity of classical cinema and, in so doing, explore cinema’s ability to portray the flickering, unstable nature of the life of the mind and of the heart.

This tribute brings together a selection of Resnais’ work from the 1960s to the 2000s, including three screenings of a recent addition to the HFA’s collection: a new 35mm print of the too little-seen 1968 masterpiece Je t’aime, je t’aime. — David Pendleton