VD: Tout la Memoire du Monde

In the 1956 documentary Tout la Memoire du Monde, Alain Resnais somehow went against the original script, which was written by Remo Forlanis in an attempt to emphasis the function of the library as a symbol of the working of the human mind and intelligence.Instead, the great Bibliotheque becomes a prison that 'man incarcerate the books which threaten to submerge them be sheer weight of numbers.' Alain employed the long tracking shot and always framed/confined camera/audience vision in small cubes, such as the space between iron stairs, and the long narraow corridor between book shelves. In so doing, he managed to create a sense of alineation, mystery and strangeness.

There is one sequence of how one newly-released journal is processed in the library, which without being in the public circulation, is sent straightly to the library, and after a strict and mechanical procedure, is submerged into the vast store of the library. Though this process should have been more clearly present in details with close-ups, Alain mostly used medium shots, and even sometimes presented the bird view of piles of the working staff cleanning and writing and piling this journal. This sequence ends when the journal is classified, stamped with date, and finally squeezed into other books on shelf,namely the millions sleeping books which may never been touched upon by people. This Date, conveyed by the cold narration, become the date when the journal is dead. This whole process of classifying a new journal resembles the prelude of a funeral. And this sense of ceremony is further carried out when the camera goes through the corridor between book shelves.

Camera is set at a low angle in front of the moving librarian, watching him pushing the trolley with books coming forward through as if from the deep unknown dark, walking through the narrow between two fully occupied shelves, thus several layers of the two shelves on both sides actually form the doors. As well, our vision is confined and bounded with this doors of numerous books on shelves, we are simultaneously presented the upcoming fate of the books in the trolley that is ultimately to be immersed in the shelves, unknown and untouched. Thus, they become one smallest part of the world memory.

Not long after this comes one of the most ironic sequences is when it shows how the ancient manuscripts, which have already been gnawed by worms, are cleaned, patched and microfilmed. The plastic shield is used to protect the ancient treasure, in another word to separate the human touch from the text; or to microfilm these treasure, and later on men will only be able to read them on the screen, therefore "The picture will perpetuate the memory of perishable documents ...slow the battle against death." The camera dose not linger on any one particular process, giving equally the same time and keeping the same medium distance from our perspective, which put the viewers in a position to inspect. Actually, our inspection of the scene are in line with a paradox lying in the disparity of the original script which intends to speak for the function of restoring memory for later function but those function has seldom been realized as those memory seldom be retrieved, instead they are buried with dust. However, men wrest so hard in an effort to keep alive those memory, as the more men uses memory, the sooner they are going to perish. As a result, modern technology is used in this battle between books and death, more importantly, between men and their fear to lose history.