Last Year at Marienbad is a useful example of a film which attempts to show that cinema is able to describe psychological drama. The more detailed the description, the more "scientific" the forms; the more "scientific" the forms, the more abstracted from their environment the objects become. Resnais' documentary style (for example, long traveling shots) appears to work in this film visually to synthesize the "felt" with the "seen" object or objects. (p. 40)

Last Year at Marienbad occupies an important place in the history of narrative film, that it was a film that had to be made, and that—once done—new ideas about the possibilities of cinema can arise from a critical viewing of the film and its premises.

I think that Marienbad experimentally moves in a direction which is valid for showing off cinema's technology rather than for displaying its ability to "put life into action...