Now no one condones over-baked Message Films, and no one wants to have his opinions manipulated. But is this negative, chaotic response the real alternative to artless naivete or subliminal sophistication? The critics have answered with a happy yes.

Thirsty for anti-social art, they have assumed that a hundred different meanings for a hundred different people are per se an artistic value. Bosley Crowther, well-suited to a supporting role in The Emperor's New Clothes, picks up the chant and after that you can't tell the tabloids from the suave cinema quarterlies without a pretty damn good scorecard.

Along with the psychological dots that we individuals are supposed to connect, what has Resnais given us? The film not only lacks a plot ("Haven't I met you somewhere before?"--it's a mediocre line at a party), it has no characters. The leading man is reduced to a one-dimensional figure who stares intently at a girl. She scratches her right shoulder with her left hand ten or fifteen times, and turns away from his PIERCING glance.

Philosophically, Marienbad raises only cocktail questions. Nor has Resnais experimented with his medium, for he takes no real risks. On the basis of Hiroshima Mon Amour, interestingly enough, he was virtually assured of wide critical attention and box-office interest. A true risk, artistic or otherwise, never really takes the form of a publicity stunt.

The one real success of the film, and here Resnais deserves full credit, is the ease and brilliance with which it shuffles the past, present and future in exploring a single situation. This type of synthesis, Resnais shows, is a specific virtue of the cinema.

Somebody has said that after fifteen minutes at this movie you get the joke. Maybe ten.