LA JETÈE
PART IThis is the story of a man, marked by an image of his childhood.
The violent scene that upsets him, and whose meaning he was to grasp only years later, happened on the main jetty at Orly, the Paris airport, sometime before the outbreak of World War lll.
Orly. Sunday.
Parents used to take their children
there to watch the departing planes.
On this particular Sunday...
the child whose story we are telling
was bound to remember the frozen sun...
the setting at the end of the jetty...
...and a woman's face.
Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments.
Later on they do claim remembrance when they show their scars.
That face he had seen was to be the only peacetime image to survive the war.
Had he really seen it?
Or had he invented that tender moment to prop up the madness to come?
The sudden roar,
the woman's gesture,
the crumpling body,
...and the cries of the crowd on the jetty blurred by fear.
Later, he knew he had seen a man die...
...And sometime after came the destruction of Paris.
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