Sightlines · reception
How Muriel, or the Time of Return was received
1963 · Alain Resnais · Muriel, or the Time of Return on Sightlines
The arc
Overshadowed on release by the twin sensations of Hiroshima mon amour and Marienbad, Muriel baffled 1963 audiences and underperformed — but critics have steadily promoted it since, and for many Resnais devotees it's now quietly his masterpiece.
What’s debated
The perennial cinephile fight: is Muriel the neglected middle child that actually outdoes Marienbad, or Resnais at his most forbiddingly fragmented?
Its footprint
It's a touchstone for cinema about the Algerian War's repressed aftermath — a subject French film was barely allowed to touch in 1963 — and gets invoked whenever a movie tries to show a nation refusing to remember.
Where it stands
A canon climber and critics' darling — the 'deep cut' Resnais that cinephiles flash to signal they've gone past the two famous ones.
Did you know? Delphine Seyrig — the impossibly glamorous enigma of Marienbad just two years earlier — deglamorised herself to play a middle-aged widow and won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at Venice 1963 for it.