The Immortal One

Alain Robbe-Grillet's 1963 directorial debut rests on the reputation he earned as the writer of Last Year at Marienbad, and it was shot entirely in Istanbul. A melancholy man meets a woman who will not say who she is; days later she vanishes, and everyone around him behaves as though they have no idea who he means. The film does not solve a mystery, it builds unsolvability as a structure: the same scenes recur in different orders, the locations blur into one another. A Belgian producer agreed to let Robbe-Grillet direct on the condition that the film be shot in Turkey, because of blocked funds from an earlier film that could not be taken out of the country. The cast includes Turkish actors such as Sezer Sezin and Ayfer Feray. It played the Berlin International Film Festival and won the Prix Louis Delluc, yet contemporary critics met it with indifference or hostility and it failed commercially. Who it's for: viewers interested in the nouveau roman, in films that deliberately fracture narrative, and in images of 1960s Istanbul. Who it's not for: anyone waiting for the story to resolve, or bothered by performances kept intentionally artificial.