User reviews

"Hiroshima mon amour" (1959) is an extraordinary tale of two people, a French actress and a Japanese architect - a survivor of the blast at Hiroshima. They meet in Hiroshima fifteen years after August 6, 1945 and become lovers when she came there to working on an antiwar film. They both are hunted by the memories of war and what it does to human's lives and souls. Together they live their tragic past and uncertain present in a complex series of fantasies and nightmares, flashes of memory and persistence of it. The black-and-white images by Sasha Vierney and Mikio Takhashi, especially the opening montage of bodies intertwined are unforgettable and the power of subject matter is undeniable. My only problem is the film's Oscar nominated screenplay. It works perfectly for the most of the film but then it begins to move in circles making the last 20 minutes or so go on forever.

Although already a fan of Last Year At Marienbad, nothing prepared me for Hiroshima. The film seems to glide along (and is obsessed by this movement) at a pace all of its own, drawing us into a labyrinth of memories, history and desire. Part anti-war documentary, part philosophical treatise, part psychological study, partly its own love affair with its medium. While the performances are slightly dated, you soon accept them and are beguiled by Sacha Vierny's stark cinematography and its hypnotic score. Its place in modern cinema is striking. Without it no Wang Kar Wai, no Peter Greenaway (who 'stole' away its cinematographer) I am not sure what it ultimately 'said' about the bomb, the war or our fictional memories and desires... as it seems to seduce through absence rather than auteurist presence (at the other end of the spectrum to Goddard perhaps) but was content to puzzle its enigma. Beautiful.

A poetic and haunting film about the tragedy of death, the ability people have of picking up the pieces and moving on, and yet history inexorably repeating itself, both in individual lives and with mankind. It's got an undercurrent of anti-war messaging in it as we see the horrifying results of the atomic bomb in graphic detail, but the film is more than that. The cinematography is beautiful, both in Hiroshima and the Loire Valley, and director Alain Resnais tells the story brilliantly via flashbacks and meaningful little moments, those which would stand out in one's memory.

The premise is fairly simple: a French woman (Emmanuelle Riva) has a short affair with a Japanese man (Eiji Okada) while she's in Hiroshima acting in a film, but both of them know it's short-lived. They're both married, she's due to fly back to France, and she confesses that she's never gotten over a forbidden affair she had as a teenager with a German soldier fourteen years earlier, during the war. She's still traumatized by this, so much so that she sees this new lover as a version of the man she knew from the past, and a pale version at that. As she speaks about it, she uses pronouns as if she were still talking to her old lover, and we can see from the flashbacks just how crushed she was - driven to madness, shunned by the French townspeople as a traitor, and made to live silently in a cold cellar by her parents. It's a harrowing tale.

The love she has in Hiroshima has some incredible erotic moments, even if they are brief and restrained. Keep an eye on Emmanuelle Riva's hands in this film as she caresses him; they are so loving. And yet, the film is quite brutal in its honesty, and he's forced to hear both her memories from the past and, towards the end, see another man approach her, visualizing how replaceable he is. He's just a link in a chain for her, just as she is for him. "I meet you. I remember you. Who are you?" she says, and "I don't mind being like a thousand women to you." It's a cynical view of love that may leave you cold, particularly as Marguerite Duras' script borders on pretentiousness at times.

In putting the tragedy of a single soldier's death next to the death of hundreds of thousands of people at Hiroshima, it reinforces how tragic all of those lives lost were; they all had their own stories, even if in both cases they were part of "the enemy." However, it's even more tragic when we reflect that mankind will move on, soon forget, and repeat the same mistakes, just as lovers move on, soon forget, and meet new lovers. We see a dual to the horror of forgetting war when he says "Some years from now, when I have forgotten you and other romances like this one have recurred through sheer habit, I will remember you as a symbol of love's forgetfulness. This affair will remind me how horrible forgetting is." This is echoed in her lines "Just as in love, there is this illusion, this illusion that you will never be able to forget, the way I had the illusion, faced with Hiroshima, that I would never forget." Forgetting to some extent is necessary to heal and move on even when it seems impossible, and yet it can also be inevitable, and render what we forget meaningless. It's interesting to think about.

One of the little scenes early on that I loved was when he visits her 'peace movie' set, and the two of them begin talking. As she smiles at him in the sunshine, a demonstrator walks by carrying a picture of a victim of the bombing, which is a somber juxtaposition, and yet so subtly executed by Resnais. There are countless other moments, including when we see the various places she and the German soldier find to carry on with each other, which has overtones of cheapness and lust, and yet, also love trying to find a way in an impossible time. Just as she's irreparably damaged by the love of her life's death, so mankind seems irreparably changed after the Hiroshima bombing. What a fascinating response she has to his question about what Hiroshima meant to her: "The end of the war... completely, I mean. Astonishment that they dared, astonishment that they succeeded. And for us, the start of an unknown fear. Then, indifference. And fear of that indifference." It's an existential moment in a brave new world, and perhaps that's what this film really is - an existential romance, one that is devastating.

Following Alain Resnais' stunning film "Night and Fog" (1956) about the Holocaust, he was commissioned to do a 45 min documentary on the atomic bomb. After a few months of reviewing existing Japanese documentaries on the subject (such as the work of Hideo Sekigawa: "Hiroshima" and "Children of Hiroshima"), Resnais quit the project, saying that a new documentary couldn't add anything to what has already been said and shown. That's when the producers floated the idea of hiring a screenwriter and turning the documentary into a feature length drama. Resnais accepted, and the result is far better than the sum of documentary + drama. "Hiroshima mon amour" is a powerful film on the subject of tragedy, the persistence of memory, and the hope--if there is any--of recovering from something so horrible that your mind does everything in its power to block it out.

The story follows 2 lovers, a nameless French woman and a nameless Japanese man, over the course of 24 hours. We open on them parting on the morning after their casual but passionate affair, and the film takes us through the day, evening and night to the following morning as they each wrestle with the inability to say goodbye because they realize they are hopelessly bound together by the same haunting demons. The man was a Japanese soldier who had returned to find his home incinerated, while the woman has her own wartime trauma to reckon with, something she refuses to confront at first but slowly reveals piece by piece to this strange man who is oddly the most kindred soul she has met in the 14 years since the war.

Although there's no real "action" here, the storytelling is suspenseful and gripping as the woman's story foams to the surface, and the man becomes a surrogate for the voice of her past, gently leading her deeper into her own suppressed memories with an almost hypnotic tone. It should be noted that the man (Eiji Okada whom you might recognize from the Brando flick "The Ugly American" or the Teshigahara masterpiece "Woman in the Dunes") didn't speak a word of French before filming, so his dialogue is wonderfully slow, careful and childlike. It reminded me of Ron Perlman's charming monosyllabic French in "City of Lost Children".

The woman is fantastically played by Emmanuelle Riva in her first (of many) starring roles. Her slowly evolving performance gives us one of the most realistic, most intimate portraits of a person who is repressing a painful secret, on the surface completely normal and happy-go-lucky but, as we soon realize, deeply tormented and empty inside.

Relating all of this back to the original intent of this "atom bomb documentary", it gives us a subject far more deeply personal than any historical recounting of facts and images. If we're paying attention, we realize that this nameless French woman's story is the story of every victim of war. More than that, it's the story of the human race struggling to recover from its own foolish penchant for self-destruction.

I have avoided seeing this for several decades, mainly because I had been afraid to see it. The very word "Hiroshima" calls to my mind the horrific events of August 6, 1945. Having once seen scenes of the aftermath of the bombing on the civilian population, one is not anxious to revisit those. My reaction resonates perfectly with the two main themes of this movie: the inability to forget, and how important life events can easily slip into the fog of memory. Two phrases from the movie underline this duality, "memory, I banish you," and "the horror of forgetting." It *is* a horror to forget what happened to Hiroshima at the end of WWII. One would think that that memory would prevent anyone but the most insane politician from even contemplating the use of a nuclear weapon, but it's astonishing that the standoff between Kruschev and Kennedy brought us to the edge of nuclear war in 1962. Only seventeen years after Hiroshima the memory had faded to where it was not unthinkable to unleash a more potent hell.

The city of Hiroshima provides the central backdrop. At the time this was filmed we see that the city has risen from the ashes in the fourteen years since its destruction. There are some stomach turning images shown from exhibits in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and seen during a peace parade, but this movie is not a documentary about the bombing, but rather a story overlaid on that background. The two main characters are a man and a woman who remain nameless throughout the movie. The woman (Emmanuelle Riva) is a French film star who has come to Hiroshima to make a peace movie. While there she meets a Japanese man (Eiji Okada) and they engage in a brief, passionate affair. Obviously the man has been wounded by the war, but the war has left the woman with painful memories as well--memories of pleasure that cause pain.

The presentation is abstract and symbolic rather than realistic. For example, there is a scene that has the man and woman walking along the street at a slow pace where the man gradually falls behind and ultimately fades into the background. This scene is effective due to its deliberate pacing and emotional restraint rather than its realism. However, the arty production does not prevent the story from being accessible. The black and white filming is appropriate for the subject matter and is also a good choice since there are so many close-ups. I never know who should get credit for impressive cinematography, but acknowledgment should be given for that here.

Both the leads turn in noteworthy performances. Riva is good at expressing her painful remembrances and Okada is more reserved, but no less passionate.

I am glad to have finally seen this. I can now scratch it off of my "should see" list.

"Hiroshima, mon Amour" is a film about memory, about bliss and happiness of long ago buried in the rubble of trauma and the fear to forget what was before. As forgetting means the threat to eradicate everything that once constituted individual or collective meaning of life, to let a dream that transcended sorrows, the hope, elation and joy sink back into oblivion, to make the past and thus existence built on it irrelevant. Director Alain Resnais and writer Marguerite Duras set out on a remarkable poetic journey to express these mentioned thoughts and hauntingly succeeded. The viewer becomes witness of the portrayal of intimate insights in the soul of a French actress who has a brief affair with a Japanese, but the sincere love combined with the horror of the historic place the couple finds itself in is reason enough to awaken an own personal story of innocence that once resulted in tragedy. The Japanese city of Hiroshima and the French Nevers become symbols of lives where history casts a long shadow and drowns the light. Unless one finds a way to penetrate the darkness, and in this rare case two people do.

"Hiroshima, mon Amour" is a true piece of art with an emphasis on Duras' literary approach on the subject matter, enhanced by Resnais Nouvelle Vague inspired cinematography and editing techniques. The film conveys a deeply melancholic tone through images, camera movements, restrained music and monotone talk. Resnais adds quick cuts and cross cuts to capture how thoughts and emotions travel from one city to another, from present to past, from trauma to what preceded it, circling again and again around the protagonist's hidden secret in order to unearth it, share it, finally give it back its importance. In the end it is all about Hiroshima, who helps to remember Nevers, and Nevers to remember Hiroshima. "Hiroshima, mon Amour" is probably not a film to instantly grab you, but it is a lasting one. One to... remember.

Tragedy and memory may bind, but in the human spirit is the means of redemption and rebirth, though difficult. Elle, a French actress making an anti war film in Hiroshima (Emmanuelle Riva) and Lui, an architect (Eiji Okada) embark upon an affair whilst grappling with the horror of the past. At first the film confronts, it seems self critical but as it goes moves beyond the universal to the personal. At first we see the two, naked bodies entwined amidst falling sand (that of time), then the sand is cut off. Elle talks of Hiroshima, of the bomb and its effects, of a commemorative museum as Lui contradicts at every turn. And later we see something of Elle's film, slogans, horror reduced to image on paper held aloft. The question lingers, from such horror as the atomic bomb can, or should any art be made, is such a thing even with the noblest of points more than just exploitation? Its a difficult arena and one could argue shaky morality in the fundamentals of this film, but ultimately it isn't a film about morality but people and as a psychological work it is very fine. Much focus is made upon the faces of the two leads, this is very much an interior film, driven by their performances. Both are exceptional, Riva moving between deep love and sorrow, playful happiness and sudden trouble, openness and denial, while Okada is more teasing, open and warm, sometimes vexed or confused, always coaxing. For her the past is alive, her sorrows as a teen in love and mistreatment at the hands of her elders draws her to romance parallelled, her new love a reflection of her old passion for a German soldier. But for him the past is something annihilated, for him no country at all, but something to be lived with her, his ashes rekindled in her memory. As the two move through their romance the two conflict in their relationship with the past and emotions are stripped, sad but ultimately hopeful as the two come to recognise and embody their pasts, with future unknown. And they embody place as well, Elle a symbol of rural France, its romance, tradition and punishment and Lui symbolic of city, and more so city in rebirth, in hope, with their relationship saying something for the connection of old and new, not just on a personal or psychological level but universal. Its potent, heartwarming stuff and as moving for me as just about any film that has required me to really think. 9/10 from me, highly recommended.

A very fine film, no less uncompromising than the slightly later Last Year In Marienbad, but perhaps an easier introduction for those who have seen nothing of Resnais' work. After the infamous close-ups of the couple entwined, as flesh and as stone, we switch, seemingly, to a documentary style telling of Hiroshima and the bomb. But though this happens Resnais' film is about the couple and in particular her past years and love, that was lost. This doomed relationship hangs on because the Japanese architect she has met seems to realise that the only way he can 'hold on' to this fleeting love, is for her to reveal herself. And she does even to her own surprise. as the beautifully shot film unfold we discover more, as do the two lovers, and we seem a party to this fragile thing with the horrors of the war echoing in the background. And indeed in the foreground too, for as is made most clear, history does repeat itself.

Nice movie!really great. I have read some comments to it here.I have noticed that some Americans and a Scotchman think it's awful...:-) Some of them watched it at school or not for a free decision...I can understand them...Me too ,I don't like to watch a movie in this way...try to watch it again when you can...I suggest... The Scotchman who didn't understand well french....mmmmm.... The woman had her hair cut by the people of her town as a mark of disdain and as a revenge for her compromise with Nazis...even if she was only in love with a German guy...that happened in France and in Italy:women who collaborated with Nazis or wives and girlfriends of fascists had their hair cut at the end of war so they could be recognized by all the people.The girl was closed in cellar because her family was deeply ashamed for her love with a German guy and because she called his German name continuously.. OK, Scotchman? the others Americans who have troubles with the plot...we know...you do linear plot,nice stories , with heroes, amazing landscapes etc...Try something different(french Italian Spanish Chinese etc)...sometime...no prejudices please. Americans who watch this movie from a political point of view...It's not this the case....and if you are so sensible when someone talks about Hiroshima a reason should exist....maybe you think it was a tremendous event and you feel a little bit guilty?We are all guilty..not only you.. don't worry... The others who hate it only because it's french (they have not been eating french fries in the last 4 years I guess )they should contact a doctor...a psychiatrist...Try ..maybe it works.. The element I love of the movie is the parallel existence of the woman and Hiroshima..destroyed and rebuilt on a desert poisoned field ....to forget... to remember..It happened ...the pain is everlasting....You have to live in a crazy condition ....Desormais!

A beautiful, lyrical, sexy, gorgeously shot, romantic, and dizzying film. I didn't find it sexist( the slap? if a character is, does that mean the entire film is as well?), or merely the tale of two cultures meeting. A Japanese architect whose family was in Hiroshima when the bomb fell, and a French actress in the city to shoot a film about "peace", have an affair. The first 20 minutes are incredible, disturbing, and haunting, "I saw the sorrow of Hiroshima", she says in bed, "You saw nothing" he responds. The two are both married, have an intense affair, that despite or maybe because there meeting is omitted, is made all the more sensual, desperate, and genuine. The music and cinematography is flawless. The actresses story dominates for the most part there after, she recounts her first love and disgrace, retold in flashbacks, one of even greater cultural taboos, and I imagine a critique of French politics of collusion in WW2. But there's more here than just politics and to look at this film on only a political level is to miss, the heart of the film, which is not that love conquers all, but that desire is irrepressible and has no social or moral compass. It can bring despair and ruin, or come from the ashes of the same place. Pain cannot be separated from pleasure, ever, or both diminish and wither away in memory. The architect imagines, he understands her story, just as she imagines she understands his, both know they don't, or cant, and want to know anyway. That isn't the kind of love that your grandparents share or don't, maybe its more desire than anything else, but it is love, true as any. And as for the ending feeling incomplete, thats how it should be, staring at each other from across the room in silence, saying to someone else, what you mean for that person to hear.

When, a few years ago I was first getting into "foreign" movies, I had bought this DVD, mainly because my Halliwells Film Guide rated it so highly. It was so outstandingly daring and different to anything I'd ever seen, I was totally immersed in both its ugliness and yes, its sheer beauty.

I wanted to give it 10/10 on the IMDb, but chickened out and settled for 9. From the very opening gritty black & white of the intertwined limbs of the lovers, artistically exploring each other like uncoiling snakes and then the inter-cut of a scarred and scorched fatality of the Hiroshima bomb, then the sober and poetic voice-over of a French woman....

Yes, I was hooked and I am again, five years later, viewing again for the second time. I've many, many more world cinema films these days and my knowledge of them has expanded enormously, but Hiroshima Mon Amour will always hold a special place within me.

It might be the photographer in me - some of images and compositions are absolutely arresting - and I'm not talking about the highly detailed studies of human deformity or of singed corpses either, or perhaps the poet in me. There is a clockwork pace of languid calm about it all, that is highly compelling - the Japanese architect and the French actress talking openly, candidly, slowly, as only lovers seem to be able to do in the best films, about their lives. Her experiences in France. Her previous loves.

There's a real sense of Carl von Dreyer's superb sense of simplicity and harrowed beauty plus a Francois Truffaut gift for storytelling. That this is Alain Resnais' first film is quite extraordinary.

The title, is so apt - It is a love story, a beautiful one and also a terrible one. Sometimes you really do have to travel to 'hell-on-earth' to fully appreciate love and beauty. France itself (this is a French film - and in the French language) is a major nuclear weapon super-power now and the feeling of guilt by association that the viewer feels is nerve-wrenchingly poignant at times, keeping one on edge. How the new architecture that is rebuilding Hiroshima from its ashes is both interesting and strange; how it conflicts with its past but is equally, its future. How the pastoral peace of France that we see in her memories compete - and compare with where she is now - and what she is doing.

I'm not going to tell everyone to buy it; many will be repulsed by some of the distressing imagery, though this is featured mostly at the beginning, so in this matter, it does get easier. Some will be put off by the measured pace, the floating cameras, the dreamy sense of 'are we there, or not?'

It might well be another five years before I see Hiroshima Mon Amour again - like tonight it won't be planned, it'll be impromptu but somehow, I'm looking forward to it already.

Director Alain Resnais' extremely matter-of-fact portrait of an adulterous, interracial relationship was considered frank to the point of shocking in 1959; today few will be even mildly startled. But while time has dimmed this aspect of the film, it has not dimmed the complex and very poetic nature of the film as a whole, and Hiroshima, MON AMOUR remains one of the finest examples of French "New Wave" cinema.

The story itself is simple. An actress (Emmanuelle Riva) has come to Hiroshima to appear in an international film promoting peace. Two days before she is scheduled to return to France, she picks up a Japanse architect (Eiji Okada.) Instead of the casual sexual encounter they expect, the two find a profound physical and emotional passion. The depth of this passion leads Riva to make revelations about a tragic wartime romance--a revelation that leaves her emotionally fractured and vulnerable to Okada's demands that she remain in Hiroshima with him. The two are then faced with the choice of destroying their marriages by continuing the relationship or parting never to see each other again, with neither choice really desirable.

A description of the storyline does not in any way describe what director Resnais does with it. The two leads are exceptional in their handling of the equally exceptional script, which presents us with a series of visual and verbal motifs (hair, hands, heads) that gradually acquire a poetic quality. The cinematography and editing manage to merge a documentary tone with a poetic lyricism. And much of the film's complexity lies in the way it treats the city of Hiroshima, which was destroyed by the atomic bomb and yet rebuilt itself; the city becomes a metaphor for the couple's relationship, the tragedies of passing time, the transient nature of memory, and everything that is both best and worst in human passion.

Ultimately, Hiroshima, MON AMOUR does not present us with any easy answers, either about the couple its story presents or the nature of human passion in all its guises; it also requires full concentration, a certain degree of patience, and the ability to grasp metaphorical content. Because of this, I do not really recommend the film to a purely casual viewer--but those actively seeking a complex cinematic experience will find it makes a powerful, multi-layered statement, and for them I recommend it very highly indeed.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Intertwined bodies intercut with one of the most astonishing footage and artistic sleight of human history. (christopher nolan's premiere of oppenheimer in Hiroshima needed to go to hell, though the existence and critical consensus, academy award of it prove that how the US medias' attitude to this vile history, history's meaning won't automatically appear, it needed to be given by people, they are now still trying to call white black, unforgivable and unforgivable, indelible.) "What else film you can make in Hiroshima, except peace?" Oh wait, and the love.

Alain Resnais's first featured film (hardly to believe this wild genius made it as a political one), with dialogues from Marguerite Duras's iconic capering, critical words, and his own adventures into the characters perception--the direct cuts between divine Emmanuelle Riva's memories of dead ex and present lover, lingering, percolating with Duras' beguiling rom-dialogues. He nails it, so naturally transitions. But you can't expect any realism in it (not Bazin's hierarchy of realism), the montages between spaces are intriguing, and to some points distressing.

Eiji Okada's performance is a little bit too loosen, and obsessive. The Emmanuelle Riva is suffering everything except the A-bomb in it. After the marvelous, beautiful beginning, the political intensity goes down, and became derelict.

Now, I'm not sure this is a 10/10 movie, merely because I've only seen it once and I would need to see it again and pay even more attention to the cinematography, the script, everything else besides the outstanding, out-of-this-world, stellar performance by Emmanuelle Riva.

What we have here is what will forever be held as cinema's legends. Emmanuelle Riva is passionate, sincere, desperate, nerve-wrecking, sleazy, angry, dreamy... she is more than you could ask in a single performance. And yes, her alone is enough to make Hiroshima Mon Amour one of the best movies of all time. After all, such performance full of emotion could only be supported by a great script and intriguing environment.

Bravo, bravo, bravo. I can only hope her performance is remembered forever.

A beautiful story of life and its devastating circumstances in a complex period of time, by the unique touch of the French New Wave. The genius behind this film is unattainable, I honestly don't think that you could say anything bad about this. Poetic, raw, intellectual, psychological, documentary, historical. Uniting the "romantic" side with the tragical fate of history is something that not anybody can do, resulting in a cruel tale of scared love and the horror of forgetting, something that nobody - not even the city - seems to be capable of doing. Sheer modernity and contemporary genius in the direction and the photography, with some stunning performances that should be learned in acting school.

So much more than a film. Very few films like Hiroshima Mon Amour actually touches the very soul of a person. Human emotions painted before your eyes in a beautifully haunting narrative. Devastation, forgotten love, pain, haunting memories; the film has all concepts required to touch & linger in your heart. The film is a visual representation of one's innermost emotions. The storytelling is where the beauty lies in & asking with the choices of dialogues. Alain Resnais happened to make one of the greatest films which can't be complimented through mere words.

This film is not only a seemingly early form of the French New Wave, it also has many qualities of a documentary, and it is certainly an international film. The film opens with a one night stand between a French actress and a Japanese architect who rendezvous one night in Hiroshima. In the short time they spend together, she reflects on her memories of the city that was not too long ago devastated by the atomic bomb. He often rejects her recollections but nevertheless he cannot bear for her to leave and he continues to pursue her. Eventually in the course of their time together she relates her days back in the town of Nevers in France. During the occupation during the war she had a beau who was German and was eventually killed. The events and aftermath haunted her even many years later. They spend some of their time together walking the streets of Hiroshima and with their time running out they vow to remember each other by Hiroshima and Nevers respectively because their real names are never mentioned. This film begins very much like a documentary on Hiroshima but very quickly it turns into a character study focusing on ideas of love, memory, and personal identity. This film is more about art and expression and it uses quick flashbacks to replicate the past with voice-overs bringing the audience back to the present. That being said it should be treated as such because it truly is a masterpiece from Alain Resnais.

Hiroshima Mon Amour is an intensive "conversation piece" between two lovers who debate the meaning of memory, perception and existence. Hardly the stuff of a blockbuster, right? Another portion of the film recounts in a semi-documentary style the effects of the atomic bomb thrown over Hiroshima fourteen years before. A provocative clash of history and personal narrative, a refusal to offer a clear narrative meaning, an infusion of political dismay, an intense eroticism - all that was sensationally provocative and extremely modern by 1959, from the pioneering use of abrupt cuts and flashback to the abstractionism of the two lovers' bodies involved in ash/sand in the early scenes. Resnais's revolutionary technique makes good use of the camera's elegant visual fluidity and soundtrack. The protagonist's inner monologues sound formal and purposefully border on a superficial existentialist charm. This is an intense exercise in how cinema can be able to express a fleeting and abstract terrain like memory (almost completely virgin by 1959) in an intense way and using ingenious metaphors. It also evokes the terror of genocide and the threat of its oblivion by mankind. In a very pioneering way, the narrative is guided more by the protagonist's affections and emotions than by the logic of the traditional linear narrative. Resnais would radicalize his interest in memory years later with Last Year in Marienbad, when he also radicalized the aridity of his formal way of film construction to the detriment of traditional would-be narration. Hiroshima is a landmark by all means.

Alain Resnais was really preoccupied with making people acknowledge and remember the terrors of war, as humanity tends to forget and repeats it over and over again. After making short documentaries (e.g. night and fog, recovering nazi film material so no one kept turning a blind eye to dimension what really happened) he decided to make something about Hiroshima but it was impossible to do a doc of something that he wasn't able to truly put in images, so in the end he wrote a love story of a french woman and a japanese that was in the middle of the war when everything happened. She keeps repeating that she knows about Hiroshima, he denies it "You saw nothing in Hiroshima". Algerian war was going on during Resnais' time, he was making a statement through his films, not to forget, to remember everything that went on and not to make the same mistakes. This is the constant dialog in the film which leaves us without knowing what will happen in the near future. The last scene of the couple is vague and without answers, just as we usually feel when we simply try to forget.

Were it remade shot for shot for today's audiences, "Hiroshima Mon Amour" would present just as avant-garde as it did in 1959. Yes, we are way more accustomed to non-linear storytelling and flashbacks, but the documentary elements, deemphasized plot and long sequences all push back against the norms of even the most "modern" of today's edgier films. What a way to put in motion the French New Wave.

The story of two lovers reeling from their torrid extramarital affair put in the context of the bombing of Hiroshima just over a decade earlier creates an audacious juxtaposition of love and war and the way we ignore trauma or worse yet – suppress it.

That Alain Resnais began the process of making this film as a documentary puts so much of it in perspective. The lengthy prologue combining eye-opening post-bomb footage with images of the lovers' passionate embraces set to Marguerite Duras' poetic voice-over dialogue is striking and unforgettable, if not disparate from the romantic drama that ensues. That this historical context doesn't engage with the rest of the story directly feels disappointing, but perhaps Resnais meant only to set a powerful tone. He wants to send the viewer into the bulk of the story aware of the history and feeling a certain melancholy – to just have it hang like a distant shadow over the rest of the film as an inescapable point of comparison.

Most apparent is the way the heat of "ten thousand suns" leading to 200,000 dead and 80,000 injured puts into perspective the "problem" that her/elle (Emmanuelle Riva) and him/lui (Eiji Okada) are falling in love with each other but their time is coming to an end. Yet by the end of their long series of conversations, some deeper truths are revealed and the comparison does end up feeling remarkably less lofty by way of narrative optical illusion.

At the center turns out to be Riva's character and performance. She is mesmerizing to watch and acts circles around her co-star (who isn't as developed as a character, though intentionally so it seems). Her performance is all the more special when you consider that all her most intense work comes in the form of recalling memories. If she can't drive the emotions of her character deeply into the heart of the audience, the entire film would feel disjointed and petty, especially given the Hiroshima comparison.

Credit for Duras can't be undersold either; her literary background is apparent in the highly poetic narration and dialogue, adding a serious degree of prestige to the film. Her writing underpins virtually all the best moments of "Hiroshima." Chiefly, it allows Resnais to make creative leaps with visuals, editing and structure. There is always this strong story for him to fall back on.

All these elements combined make "Hiroshima Mon Amour" an arrestingly thought-provoking film. It has the kind of bones that could allow for remakes in any number of eras and contexts but also the flourishes that allow it to still feel edgy, even nearly 60 years later.

~Steven C

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