What "Back to the Future" and "Terminator" Owe to "La Jetée" A figure from the postapocalypse in "La Jetée." Chris Marker, who died earlier this year at 91, was an enigmatic figure, reluctant to be photographed and prone to biographical embellishment. A creature of the European postwar avant-garde, Marker would seem an unlikely influence on modern Hollywood. But his 28-minute "photo-novel," "La Jetée" - a shuffle of mostly still black-and-white images now marking its 50th birthday - has spawned more would-be blockbusters than any comic book or series of fantasy novels. This is partly because of its subject, which is time travel. Marker didn't invent the concept in literature or film - H. G. Wells's "Time Machine" was adapted for the screen two years before "La Jetée" - but he did unlock its poetic possibilities. In "La Jetée," a P.O.W. held by postapocalyptic rebels is sent into the past in search of a childhood memory and then into an even more distant, technologically advanced future. The scenario was adapted and expanded by Terry Gilliam in "12 Monkeys," but the themes of "La Jetée" hover over everything from the farce of the "Back to the Future" movies to the terror of the "Terminator" franchise. Marker's fingerprints can be found on "Looper," on the most recent "Star Trek" movie and on lower-budget experiments like "Primer" and, of course, "The Future." According to the laws of physics and the principles of philosophy, time travel is impossible. What Marker showed, with his haunting images and matter-of-fact voice-over, is that for movies, it is irresistible, even essential. The camera is itself a time machine, drawing us simultaneously forward and backward, in the film's words "calling past and future to the rescue of the present." And what drives the journey is not scientific curiosity but regret and desire, the longing to recover lost time and know ourselves for the first time.