"A cat is never on the side of power."

Having grown up in the American public school system, I was spoonfed, for the greater part of my life, the notion that history is to be viewed as a series of dates, key events and movements occuring within a political spectrum that could be cut into clearly defined factions like a pizza; each slice falling clearly on the side of the Left or Right.  Chris Marker's remarkable essay film A Grin Without a Cat, focusing primarily on the rise and fall of the New Left from a global perspective, treats the bevy of historical events and political movements explored in the film not as individual and separate but as elastic and constantly in flux.  Interspersing montages of manipulated found footage and shots from narrative films with interviews and newsreel footage, Marker's historical journey becomes far more poetic than your typical documentary, engaging the events he portrays in a way that is far more dialectical than didactic.

Like the time-traveling protagonist in his science fiction masterpiece, La Jetee, Marker's journey through time is non-linear in fashion, allowing him to not only avoid the mundane, timeline-based trappings of a textbook, but also the freedom to veer off into the side streets and back alleys of history, through what at first may seem like non-sequitors to help convey the complexity and density of the political climate of the 1960s and 70s.  The ambiguity of this climate and the loss of a clear delineation between good and evil, highlighted by the failure in Vietnam and the downfall of the Nixon administration, is thoroughly explored throughout the film, which examines the various counter-movements and factions within factions within factions until the spectrum becomes a stew that is constantly stirred, with each new occurance adding yet another spice which redefines and reshapes the surrounding environment.  Marker's masterful blend of archival footage, poetic voice-overs and carefully orchestrated editing techniques all combine perfectly to convey a nearly absurd amount of information about histories that have, at least in the West, been all but completely ignored.