A Grin Without a Cat

The film covers the decade between 1967 and 1977: the movements against the war in Vietnam, May 1968, the death of Che Guevara, the occupation of Prague, the Allende government in Chile and the coup, and the breaking up of left organisations in Europe. The material is entirely archive: news footage, amateur recordings and film of meetings. Voices read text over those images. Chris Marker directs. It runs close to four hours and is in two parts. Marker shot some of the material himself; the rest was gathered from the militant film groups and news agencies of the period. The subject is not victory but defeat. Marker looks back at the end of the decade and asks why the left came apart; his criticism of his own side is direct. The image in the title comes from Alice: a grin without a body. Marker uses it for a movement continuing after nothing of it is left. The narrative is not chronological; events are gathered under themes and the same footage is used again in different contexts. The director updated the film in 1993, changing the closing section after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Who it is for: anyone interested in political documentary and the history of the twentieth century left. Who it is not for: it is very long, dense with information, and cannot be followed without prior knowledge of the events.