The Last Letter was actually Wiseman’s second fictional work. The first, Seraphita’s Diary, made in 1982, I don’t think was ever shown on television or received a theatrical release, and it also hasn’t been part of any Wiseman retrospectives as far as I know. I did see it at a private screening at the time, and had I known it was going to become so elusive, I would have taken notes or written something about it. What I best remember is that, rather like The Last Letter, it was a single person performance in diary form, starring Appolonia Von Ravenstein, who was a well known model, and who is in several scenes in his film Model from the year before, perhaps most notably as the leg in that elaborate pantyhose commercial. As Seraphita, she wore quite a number of different costumes, and the film played with the diary form, sometimes with her speaking and sometimes showing her thoughts. Wiseman refers to it these days as an experimental work and chooses not to make it available through his company, the only film he’s directed where he’s made that decision.
The Last Letter, an hour-long work in black and white, is a single actress dramatic monolog starring the incredible Catherine Samie. She is seen a number of times in La Comédie-Française, once doing a scene from Racine’s “Le Thebaide” and then movingly at the end offering best wishes at the 100th birthday of a fellow actress, so as with Seraphita’s Diary, Wiseman chose to work with someone he had already filmed in one of his documentaries. He had also directed The Last Letter on stage at the invitation of La Comédie-Française, although the film is not just a recording of the stage piece. These two fictional works indicate a carryover of his strong interest in performance, as has come up here already a number of times regarding his other films. That he has straddled at least a bit the fiction-documentary divide also suggests what might otherwise be considered dramatic elements which are so prevalent throughout his work - monologs, for example, whether on the phone, in speeches or sermons, or otherwise, are certainly something he presents deftly. I’d also say his time and work in France suggests that even though he’s the most American of film-makers, his body of work might be looked at more along the lines of European film-makers who have done work of both kinds as well - Antonioni, Resnais, Marker, Herzog, Wenders. This happens less in the United States. Spike Lee is the most notable I’d say, who has made truly great documentaries, and there’s also the sadly departed Jonathan Demme, who did excellent documentaries as well. The difference with Wiseman is that he has been an independent film-maker his entire life, getting financial backing on his own. He apparently made a few screenwriting efforts in Hollywood, but never fell down that rabbit hole, and his time in Paris has obviously been better spent creatively.
The Last Letter wisely focuses on Samie’s performance, meant to be a letter by a Ukrainian doctor that she’s writing to her son just before she’s taken and killed by the Nazis. It’s derived from a chapter of a novel by the Russian Vasily Grossman called Life and Fate which has its own amazing history that you can look up. There would probably be a great film in just setting up a camera and letting it run while Samie performs, but Wiseman’s ambitions are larger, and you wouldn’t say this film is done in a documentary style. The stylistic emphasis is upon light and shadow, and precise editing for dramatic effect. It’s yet another creative stretch for Wiseman, rather than just a carryover of documentary methods. Her performance is afforded a considerable number of close-ups of her face and hands, but these are at selected dramatic moments rather than the style of close-ups in his other films, which don’t go in quite as close on either hands or faces, except maybe back in the days of the first High School. Her costume, a black dress with the Nazi-enforced Jewish star on it is used to strong effect as well, sometimes blending so completely into the black background that all we see are her features and that star. This is definitely a stylized work.
The heavy use of shadows is likely meant to suggest her spirit, or her passage soon from life to death, a memory. The shadows are used a few ways, sometimes expressively and expressionistically multiplied behind her, and heavy use is made of a shaft of light on which her shadow appears. Welles’ The Trial and the mirror sequence of The Lady from Shanghai spring easily to mind. Sometimes Samie will exit from a shot at the bottom of the frame while the shadow then mirrors that movement at the top. There is a general interplay between her actual presence and that of her shadow, sometimes one appearing without the other. Together with very bright light on her at times with the rest of space in darkness, the sense is of a spectral figure, half here and half ghostly. It’s very suited to the material, as the character is already recounting a life that’s disappeared and that she speaks of in the past tense. It’s imaginative visually in service of a great performance and as a reflection of the horrors of the Holocaust. We should be more than accustomed by now to seeing Wiseman stretching his considerable cinematic talents.