Though less ambitious, on the face of it, than Toute la Mémoire du Monde, Resnais's most recent short, Le Chant du Styrène … is perhaps even more brilliantly perfect. I say less ambitious because, in a sense, "it has all been done before": le styrène is a type of plastic—polystyrene. But rather than an industrial documentary, the film is a synthesis of visual abstraction and verbal lyricism, and as such it has probably never been equalled since the heyday of British documentary. (p. 59)

Alain Resnais and his cameraman, Sacha Vierny …, have performed a veritable tour de force in "industrial" camera-work. The acid contrast between candy-colored ribbons, pellets, and sheets of plastic as they pass through the gamut of presses and conveyor belts and the steely greys and browns of the machinery itself, is more than simply striking: it serves to create a perfectly coherent abstract...