“Hiroshima, Mon Amour” (1959), “Last Year at Marienbad” (1961) and “Muriel” (1963). These are the first three feature films directed by Alain Resnais, and I cannot think of another director whose first three features rival them in quality. Granted, Resnais had already put in more than a decade as a short film maker (mostly documentaries) so he was hardly a novice when “Hiroshima, Mon Amour” took the film world by storm, but his accomplishment is still stunning.

While “Muriel” is hardly an obscure film, it is easily the least well-known of the three, but it’s hard to imagine why aside from the most obvious explanation: it hasn’t been as widely distributed either on film or, until now, on DVD. “Muriel” actually has two titles, the other being “The Time of Return” – multiple “returns” comprise the narrative’s main body. Bernard (Jean-Baptiste Thiérée), now in his mid-twenties, has just returned from a two year tour of duty in Algeria. Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Kérien), a dignified silver-haired gentleman, has also returned both from a lengthy stay in Algeria (or so he claims) and also into the life of his former love Hélène (Delphine Seyrig, who also starred for Resnais in “Marienbad”), who is also Bernard’s step-mother. Hélène, for her part, returns incessantly to her imagined idyllic past, an obsession signified in part by her vocation as an antique furniture dealer.

Guy Maddin is today’s king of cinematic meditations on memory, but Resnais was the memory-master of the 60’s. Hélène has a bad memory (which probably explains why she views the past so romantically) and envies those with good memories. Little does she know that her step-son is cursed by his eidetic recall of the most traumatic event of his life. While serving in Algeria, Bernard witnessed the interrogation, torture and murder of Muriel whose precise identity we are never told; in fact, we never even see her. Muriel is never far from Bernard’s mind; he even tells Hélène he is engaged to a woman named Muriel. Some of Bernard’s Algerian comrades, especially the vaguely menacing Robert (Philippe Laudenbach), want Bernard to drop the Muriel matter completely but he is both unable and unwilling to comply. Her memory, or at least his memory of her, must be preserved, and Bernard engages in just every form of recording you can think of: journal entries, a tape recorder and even a small portable film camera. The implication is that physical recording devices function as the best antidote to the unreliability of human memory.

Unlike in his previous two films, Resnais does not jump around in time, though he certainly skips a few beats. Each sequence is situated in a short period of time (a single day, for example) but the narrative dances back and forth among multiple story-lines involving each of the protagonists. Each character has his or her own life both in relation to and apart from the other characters: Bernard has his tortured memories; Alphonse has his own past to escape; Hélène has not only her aloof step-son and fickle lover to deal with but also the mounting gambling debts that threaten her struggling business.

Environment receives as much attention as character, a quality attributable both to Resnais and screenwriter Jean Cayrol who also wrote the catalogue-style narration for Resnais’ “Night and Fog” (1955). The film opens with a rapid-fire montage of Hélène’s household belongings; similar montages focus on building exteriors, street signs, and consumer goods in storefronts.

“Muriel” is a portrait of trauma as moving as any since, well, “Hiroshima, Mon Amour.” Lonelyache exudes from every frame of the film, in each precise gesture, each exacting detail. The film is so densely packed with that even after four viewings I feel like I have barely scratched its surface. In fact, I find it more difficult to write about than even “Marienbad.”

As Jonathan Rosenbaum points out, Jean-Luc Godard is more properly considered a Swiss filmmaker which leaves the titles of “Greatest Living French filmmaker” up for grabs, and no more obvious candidate to fill the post than Alain Resnais. “Muriel” is one of his greatest achievements. Personally, I think it's an even better film than "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" but that's splitting hairs.

Christopher Long