Alain Resnais, 1922–2014

The French filmmaker Alain Resnais, whose film career spanned more than sixty years, and included the remarkable 1961 work Last Year in Marienbad, has died at the age 91. BBC News notes that while Resnais made his name as part of the French New Wave, he often strayed from realism to incorporate modernist or surrealist elements into his work. Marienbad, which was made in collaboration with the novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, is a case in point, with its dreamlike feel, nonlineal structure and anonymous characterisation. Resnais’s last film, The Life of Riley – based on an Alan Ayckbourn play – premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February.