Among the many fantastic extras on Criterion’s terrific new edition of Last Year At Marienbad is director Alain Resnais’ thoroughly lovely 1959 documentary short, Le chant du Styrene, a gripping account of plastic manufacture with a very clever (but of course) verse narration from the great Raymond Queneau. A colorful homage to the surreality of the industrial world that, like Marienbad, marries magnificent formal command to a quirky sense of play, it brims with eye-popping imagery, so much so that my customary single image for a day just wouldn’t do.
Man, Oulipo were down with Resnais? And vice versa? MAIS BIEN SUR! Wow, that’s exciting. Reordering the Q now.
My favorite part was the couplet for the little grains of dyed plastic: “On the vibrating sieve the granules swarm/Proud of their colors, lovely and warm.”
What songs the styrene sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.