| Hiroshima mon amour | |
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Original 1959 movie poster |
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| Directed by | Alain Resnais |
| Produced by | Samy Halfon Anatole Dauman |
| Written by | Marguerite Duras |
| Starring | Emmanuelle Riva Eiji Okada Stella Dassas Pierre Barbaud |
| Music by | Georges Delerue Giovanni Fusco |
| Cinematography | Michio Takahashi Sacha Vierny |
| Editing by | Jasmine Chasney Henri Colpi Anne Sarraute |
| Distributed by | Pathé Films |
| Release date(s) | France: June 10, 1959 United States: May 16, 1960 |
| Running time | 90 minutes |
| Country | France / Japan |
| Language | French / Japanese / English |
Hiroshima mon amour is an acclaimed 1959 drama film directed by French film director Alain Resnais, with a screenplay by Marguerite Duras. It is the documentation of an intensely personal conversation between a French-Japanese couple about memory and forgetfulness. It was a major catalyst for the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave), making highly innovative use of miniature flashbacks to create a uniquely nonlinear storyline.
The title literally translates from French to English as 'Hiroshima, My Love', though the film is almost always referred to by its original French title.
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Hiroshima mon amour concerns a series of conversations (or one enormous conversation) over a 36-hour long period between a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva), referred to as she, and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada), referred to as him. They have had a brief relationship, and are now separating. The two debate memory and forgetfulness as She prepares to depart, comparing failed relationships with the bombing of Hiroshima, and the perspectives of people inside and outside the incidents. The early part of the film recounts, in the style of a documentary, but narrated by the so far completely unidentified characters, the effects of the Hiroshima bomb on August 6, 1945, in particular the loss of hair and the complete anonymity of the remains of some victims. He had been conscripted into the Japanese army, and his family was in Hiroshima on that day.
The film uses highly structured, repetitive dialogue, mostly consisting of Her narration, with Him interjecting to say she is wrong, lying, confused, or to deny and contradict her statements with the film's famous line "You are not endowed with memory". Although He disagrees and rejects many of the things She says, he pursues her constantly. The film is peppered with dozens of brief flashbacks to Her life; as a youth, she was shamed and had her head shaved as shaming and punishment for having a love affair with a German soldier, which she juxtaposes with the loss of the hair "which the women of Hiroshima will find has fallen out in the morning."
According to James Monaco, Resnais was originally commissioned to make a short documentary about the atomic bomb, but spent several months confused about how to proceed because he did not want to recreate his 1955 Holocaust documentary Night and Fog. He later went to his producer and joked that the film could not be done unless Marguerite Duras was involved in writing the screenplay.[1]
The film was a co-production by companies from both Japan and France. The producers stipulated that one main character must be French and the other be Japanese, and also required that the film be shot in both countries employing film crews comprising technicians from each.[1]
Hiroshima mon amour earned an Oscar nomination for screenwriter Marguerite Duras, as well as a special award at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival,[2] where the film was excluded from the official selection because of its sensitive subject matter as well as to avoid upsetting the U.S. government.[3]
Hiroshima mon amour has been described as "The Birth of a Nation of the French New Wave" by American critic Leonard Maltin.[4] New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard described the film's inventiveness as "Faulkner plus Stravinsky" and celebrated its originality, calling it "the first film without any cinematic references".[5] Filmmaker Eric Rohmer said, "I think that in a few years, in ten, twenty, or thirty years, we will know whether Hiroshima mon amour was the most important film since the war, the first modern film of sound cinema".[6]
Among the film's innovations is Resnais' experiments with very brief flashback sequences intercut into scenes to suggest the idea of a brief flash of memory. Resnais later used similar effects in Last Year at Marienbad.
In his book on Resnais, James Monaco ends his chapter on Hiroshima mon amour by claiming that the film contains a reference to the classic 1942 film Casablanca:
| “ | Here is an 'impossible' love story between two people struggling with the imagery of a distant war. At the end of this romantic, poignant movie about leave takings and responsibilities, the two fateful lovers meet in a cafe. Resnais gives us a rare establishing shot of the location. 'He' is going to meet 'She' for the last time at a bar called 'The Casablanca' - right here in the middle of Hiroshima! It's still the same old story. A fight for love and glory. A case of do or die. The world will always welcome lovers. As time goes by.[1] | ” |
In Japan Journals: 1947-2004, film historian Donald Richie tells in an entry for 25 January 1960 of seeing the film in Tokyo and remarks on various distracting (for the Japanese) cultural errors which Resnais made. He notes, for example, that the Japanese-language arrival and departure time announcements in the train scenes bear no relation to the time of day in which the scenes are set. Also, people pass through noren curtains into shops which are supposedly closed. The noren is a traditional sign that a shop is open for business and is invariably taken down at closing time.[7]
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