When Last Year At Marienbad was first released in 1961, it was wildly controversial -- was this collaboration between director Alain Resnais and novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet a contemplation of the possibilities that lie outside traditional narrative form, a study of distance and alienation among the idle rich, a love story stripped of its traditional contexts, or some sort of cinematic snipe hunt in which viewers searched for a meaning or a story that wasn't really there? Nearly fifty years after it won the Golden Lion at {~the Venice Film Festival and became a sensation in art houses around the globe, Last Year at Marienbad still stubbornly refuses to reveal itself, but the Francophile film buffs at the Criterion Collection have allowed the picture to speak for itself in eloquent form in a beautiful two-disc DVD release. Last Year at Marienbad has been transferred to disc in its original widescreen aspect ratio of 2.35:1; the image is letterboxed on conventional televisions, and enhanced for anamorphic playback on 16:9 monitors. Director Resnais supervised and approved the transfer, and it looks superb; even those who haven't cared for the film acknowledge the excellence of Sacha Vierny's cinematography, and the beautifully rendered deep-focus images have been given a tremendous level of detail in this release. The audio has been mastered in Dolby Digital Mono, and at Resnais's behest the disc includes two sound options. As is their custom, Criterion have included a track in which digital technology has been used to clean up the audio, but in a short note in the accompanying booklet, Resnais says he believes the tonal quality of the actors' voices are negatively impacted by these techniques, so one also has the option of hearing a direct transfer without any electronic meddling, and the quality of the original audio is strong enough that there isn't a great deal of audible difference between the two versions. The film is presented in its original French, with optional English subtitles but no multiple language options. The feature fills disc one, while disc two is given over to supplementary materials. Alain Resnais sat for an audio-only interview for this release (presented with clips from the film as illustration) in which he discusses the making of Last Year At Marienbad and his collaboration with Robbe-Grillet. An original documentary on the making of the film includes interviews with several members of Resnais's crew, including filmmaker Volker Schlondorff, who was a production assistant and translator. Critic and historian Ginette Vincedeau discusses the film's layers of possible meaning and its impact upon initial release. And two short documentaries directed by Resnais round out the disc -- Le Chant du Styrene and Toute la Memoire du Monde, both of which display the same sort of rigorously controlled visual style he employed in Marienbad. And a 44-page booklet includes an essay by Alain Robbe-Grillet on the film (originally written to accompany the published edition of the screenplay), an original article by Mark Polizzotti, and an afterword by Francois Thomas on Resnais and Robbe-Grillet's later differing perspectives on the finished work. And the package design is a beautiful homage to Marienbad's distinctive title design. Once again, Criterion have taken a major film of the "arthouse" era and given it the sort of presentation it deserves -- if Last Year At Marienbad isn't likely to prompt as many lively debates in 2009 as it did in 1961, this edition proves it's still a film worth watching and discussing all these years later.