OVERLAY REPORT

Regarding the 1961 film *Last Year at Marienbad* (*L'Année dernière à Marienbad*), the most crucial action made by the lead character, **X** (played by Giorgio Albertazzi), is his **persistent and hypnotic persuasion** of the woman, **A** (Delphine Seyrig), to believe in a shared past and ultimately **leave the hotel with him**. ### The Crucial Action: Persuasion and the Creation of Memory Throughout the film, X follows A through the labyrinthine, baroque corridors of a grand hotel, insisting that they met exactly one year ago—perhaps at Marienbad, Frederiksbad, or Karlstadt—and had a romantic affair. He claims she promised to wait one year before eloping with him. The "action" is not just a physical movement but a psychological siege. X uses an unreliable, repetitive, and mesmerizing narration to impose a "memory" onto A, who initially denies ever meeting him. The climax of this action is A’s eventual submission to this narrative; she chooses to accept his version of the past as her own "truth," culminating in the final scene where they walk out of the hotel together into a cold, dark, and geometric garden—leaving behind the static, "living statue" world of the hotel guests. ### Who Helps Them: The Character M The primary figure who "helps" X make this action, albeit in a paradoxical and perhaps unintentional way, is **M** (Sacha Pitoëff), the second man who is widely interpreted as A's husband, guardian, or jailer. Specific details regarding M's "help": * **The Game of Nim:** M is a master of a mathematical game (a variation of Nim) played with matchsticks or cards. He repeatedly plays against X and **always wins**. While this demonstrates M's absolute dominance over the hotel's logical and structured reality, his constant "winning" at the game highlights his emotional detachment and inability to "win" in the realm of passion or memory. By defeating X at the game, M inadvertently pushes X to double down on his pursuit of A through the only avenue where M has no power: the subjective and irrational world of memory. * **Deliberate Relinquishment:** In many critical interpretations (including notes by director Alain Resnais and screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet), M's "help" is seen as a form of **passive consent or stoic resignation**. Despite his dominance, M remains "cadaverous" and "disillusioned." At the film's conclusion, M recognizes—perhaps even before A does—that she is going to leave him. Instead of stopping her by force or emotional plea, he provides a "moment of actual tenderness" by allowing her to depart, effectively "losing" the woman so that he may maintain his perfect, unbroken record of winning at cards. * **Symbolic Stasis:** M represents the stifling, frozen status quo of the hotel. His very presence as a "shadow" figure helps define X as the "rescuer" or the force of "movement." Without M’s cold, rigid counterpoint, X’s persuasion would lack the necessary tension to force A into her final decision. In summary, while **X** performs the crucial action of **persuasion**, it is **M** who "helps" him by remaining a figure of pure logic and stasis, eventually yielding the field of passion to X’s persistent narrative.