A scene from Chris Marker's "A Grin without a Cat," Icarus Films, 1977

Wisdom, respect and generosity are hard to come by these days, which is why the DVD-ing of Chris Marker’s "A Grin without a Cat" (1977) could be a balm for the filmgoing soul -- particularly as it chronicles the rising-falling-rocket trajectory of the 1960s, seen in the prismatic, idiosyncratic and dialectical way that is Marker’s own. Because filmmaking isn’t merely Marker’s career but the way he experiences life, his movies aren’t shaped like composed works but instead have the ruminative texture of personal correspondence -- letters from a time machine occupied by the smartest eccentric in town. "Grin" is a three-hour-long, found-footage spiritual monologue (edited down from its original four hours) about the global tale of the mid-century rise of the citizenry against state power, and the eventual collapse of its often-conflicting ideologies. Marker is not a documentarian, really; his approach is impressionistic, and the movie takes grand, associative leaps, beginning with a stirring opening montage cutting together Eisenstein’s "Odessa Steps" massacre scene from “Battleship Potemkin” (which, he points out in his notes, reenacts an incident that never happened) with ‘60s news footage of identical waves of "riot control."

From there, we ricochet from Paris to the U.S., Bolivia, Chile, Germany, Japan, et al., from Guevara and Castro to Allende, Mao, Nixon, the Shah, Ulrike Meinhof and so on, and to jungles and city streets where distinctive surges of popular fury rise, confront violent troops and become tragically lost in their own utopian daydreams. This is not a film for students looking for an overview -- however unemphatically, Marker calls everyone on their failures, and he blames the starry-eyed leftists for their own self-immolation (particularly after May ‘68 in Paris). Still, the struggle is what interests him, because it is righteous and undeniable.

Marker is a master weaver of colliding perspectives, forgotten stories and unanswered questions, progressive enough to insist we "pay attention" to footage of the Prague Spring’s reinvention of the Czech Communist Party (because the open, free cooperation by thousands of members "wasn’t supposed to happen"), and to point out how the killed hostages during the 1972 Olympics pale before the 200 protesters killed by the Mexican government to prepare for the 1968 Games. Marker may have underestimated the "results" of ‘Nam-era social defiance (the war certainly ended earlier than it might have, and civil rights reform became unstoppable), but he brings a unique measure of deep thinking to the subject: he is passionate about the reality of history, and at the same time is fascinated by how much "history" is formed by what is photographed and therefore selectively remembered.

"Wendy and Lucy" (Oscilloscope Laboratories) and "A Grin without a Cat" (Icarus Films) are now available on DVD.

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