La Jetée

The short film that inspired Terry Gilliam's "Twelve Monkeys" (1995). A man travels through time, to his life before World War III, guided by his persistent memories of the past. The story is thoroughly narrated, almost completely made of still greyscale images.

This French short film, made in 1962 at the height of the Cold War, tells the story of an unnamed man who travels through time looking for help for the destroyed city of Paris. It served as the basis for "Twelve Monkeys," and, I theorize, may have kick started the central idea in "The Time Traveler's Wife." Translated as "The Pier," the film opens on a Parisian airport pier, where people can watch planes take off and land. The film has no dialogue aside from the narrator and some hushed whispering, so we are told that the unnamed Man (Davos Hanich) remembers being at the airport as a child bef…