La Jetée

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La Jetée (The Pier) is a 1962 black and white French science fiction short film. Set in a post-apocalyptic future where humanity has been forced underground due to the aftermath of World War Three and faces extinction from lack of resources, it details a series of time-travel experiments that a prisoner is subjected to in the hopes of being able to acquire aid to help with humanity's present situation.

The film is notable for being shot almost entirely as a series of still images, with no dialogue other than some mumbled German.

The later, more mainstream film, 12 Monkeys, was inspired by La Jetée, and lifts several concepts directly from the older film, including a prisoner being sent back in time to help with an apocalyptic future, and that character having witnessed his own death as a child.

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Tropes used in La Jetée include:

• Apocalypse How: Class 4.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Time travel works by apparently putting little masks with strings or wires over your eyes
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The Russian chant We Bow Before Thy Cross
• Crystal Spires and Togas: The protagonist glimpses a version of this when he is sent into the future.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack
• Just Before the End
• Le Film Artistique
• No Name Given: None of the characters have actual names
• Ominous Russian Chanting
• Stable Time Loop
• You Can't Fight Fate
• You Already Changed the Past