It flows past one’s eyes with the suavity and never-to-be-questioned illogic of a dream, and indeed it may be that we are intended to perceive that its story is a sort of dream within a dream.

The story's obscurity turns out to result from its protagonists' own efforts to deny or blur their painful past.

The visual moments that remain in the mind are without exception locked into place by the intensity of the score.

Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Last Year at Marienbad falls into the dreaded and/or hallowed not-for-everyone category, along with such film school staples as The Seventh Seal, 8 1/2, and L'Avventura.