Search: Directed by Alain Resnais

The smooth roving camera work - occasionally broken with quick cuts - gives the film a dramatic edge, amped up by the Maurice Jarre's stirring and playful lorchestral score.

Even after many viewings it is difficult to fully grasp the film's historical significance, storytelling innovations and stylistic brilliance.

If the characters are focused on how and if, for us the question why lingers in the air.

There are so many ‘solutions’ to the enigma of the plot that analysing it or watching it repeatedly is more fun than the first viewing.

In clumsier hands this might have been yet another flimsy drama about a group of people longing for romance, but Alain Resnais' astute handling gradually illuminates those human interiors and shows us much more going on.

A philosophical note lends the film an additional air of mystery that, like the plastics, can be moulded in a variety of ways, depending on your viewpoint.