Director
Chris Maker
Leading Actors/Actresses
Davos Hanich
Supporting Actors/Actresses
Hélène Chatelain, Jacques Ledoux, Jean Négroni
Genre
Drama, Romanc, Short Film
Language
French
Awards
Won - Prix Jean Vigo for best Short Film
Date of Release
1962
Producer
Anatole Dauman
Setting and Context
Fictional Post-Nuclear World War III France, 1962
Narrator and Point of View
Narrator is an unnamed character. POV is that the narrator through Davos.
Tone and Mood
Dramatic
Protagonist and Antagonist
Protagonist is Davos. Antagonist is The Experimenter.
Major Conflict
Davos becomes a time traveler for his people after World War III has changed life. He travels to the future and the past in order to find help, but when he returns he finds he is sentenced to death. He asked to travel back to the past rather than be executed and his request is granted.
Climax
Davos returns to The Jetty, specifically to the moment from his past that has effected him greatly. But it is too late once he realizes that another man has followed him from the future in order to assassinate him, and Davos is murdered in front of the younger version of himself.
Foreshadowing
The moment at The Jetty foreshadows that it will become the defining moment of the film and a key piece to unlocking the mystery of the story.
Understatement
It is understated that the moment at The Jetty is the moment Davos witnessed his own death.
Innovations in Filming or Lighting or Camera Techniques
N/A
Allusions
The film is an allusion to the fact that holding onto our past can kill us.
Paradox
Davos chooses to go back to the moment in his youth at The Jetty, paradoxically it is the moment of his death.
Parallelism
The Jetty is the parallel in this featurette as we see it at the opening of the film when Davos is a child and at the end when he is killed.
