Providence (1977), written by David Mercer and directed by Alain Resnais, is an extraordinary film. It’s the only movie Resnais ever made in English. It’s basically a cast of five: Dirk Bogarde, David Warner, John Gielgud, Ellen Burstyn and Elaine Stritch. What’s so amazing about it is that you don’t realize until the end that the story you’re witnessing is the rabid dream of a writer. The protagonists are always changing scenes but it’s not in any way faux-real. They walk down a long flight of stairs to enter a room and the next minute they might walk into the same room – without the stairs – and you realize Resnais has accommodated the slight adjustments of memory and fantasy. It was shot in France but Resnais sent an additional camera crew to America, so the film switches very subtly between the footage shot between the two locations, which creates an unhinging sense of non-location.
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