Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) User Reviews

Brilliant but Tiresome

[glofau · 7/10 · 11 January 2016]

Hiroshima Mon Amour is brilliantly made and brilliantly acted, with a thoughtful, poetic script by the great French writer, Marguerite Duras. Its images are lyrical, disturbing, fascinating, and its anti-war message is profound and still frighteningly relevant. But in terms of strict entertainment...

Any film which begins with abstracted images of the entwined body parts of human lovers, slowly becoming encrusted with ash and (presumably) atomic fallout... and then spends an obscure 15 minutes arguing about the death and disfigurement of multitudes during the atomic bomb blast in Hiroshima, and the nature of memory and forgetfulness... well, you realize immediately that this movie isn't set up to go anyplace fun. Unless your idea of "fun" is witnessing someone else's graphic misery without the cleansing catharsis that accompanies a more conventional tragedy. Hey, some people enjoy that kind of thing! Not me, but to each his/her own.

Despite a structure which is famous for meandering through time, the film's narrative is fairly cogent and non-confusing, which is a plus. But the central illicit, inter-racial affair between a French actress and the Japanese architect whom she hooks up with during a film shoot in Hiroshima... It doesn't really make any sense. From the tiny acorn of a chance hookup, grows a mad-passionate love affair based almost entirely on memories dredged from the actress' past, which she disgorges to the architect, rather like a colorless Scheherezade, as she loses all rational connection to the present, conflating a youthful indiscretion with a deceased German soldier (and her subsequent descent into madness) with the non-happenings surrounding her current Japanese amour. German, Japanese... clearly, she can't tell these Axis races apart! I understand that the point of the film was not to create strict narrative coherence, but rather to delve into some kind of symbolic and psychic clash between this cold-yet-overwrought union of a French woman and her obsessed Japanese lover, and the horrors of War. But, despite some moments which are outright absurdist in effect, the overall tone of the film is grinding in its humorlessness. As I watched the characters fatalistically surrendering to their doom, all I could think was, "man, that Marguerite Duras must have been a drag to be romantically involved with." I mean, the Duras script, for all it's poetic symbolism and intellectual brilliance, etc etc, tells a story of people who are criminally passive and hopelessly clingy. Love seems to transform her characters into mere victims, of love, of war, of life, masochistically reveling in their own operatic suffering while doing virtually nothing. As the nameless SHE recalls her own suffering during her madness, scraping her fingertips off on the saltpeter-encrusted walls of her parent's cellar-prison, then receiving validation of existence by luxuriously sucking her own blood from her ravaged hands because otherwise she is utterly alone, all I could think was... Oh brother! This character is so badly damaged, how did she ever manage to get happily married before she embarked on this chance affair in Japan? The imagery is fabulous and intense, but are these really human beings that could have plausibly embarked on a journey together? One human being, actually, because the Japanese architect is little more than a handsome cipher of "love"... love, in this story, apparently meaning the obsession that arises from the act of physical copulation, an experience which is equated with destruction of the nuclear holocaust variety. So, Marguerite Duras clearly had issues surrounding her expression and experience of sexuality. And the film betrays little in the way of empathy, either, the characters are infused with an undercurrent of intense selfishness as they struggle to connect. HE is constantly delving into HER unhappy past even though it can give neither of them any pleasure or joy. The more HE delves, the more SHE becomes hopelessly entangled, and the more obsessed HE becomes... until the cold and bitter end.

At least in an opera, you get to revel in an outpouring of passion! In this bitter pill, everything is so cold and humorless... well, it really is difficult to understand why people wax enthusiastic over this film so much. There is much here to ADMIRE... but not much to love, in my opinion. Except intellectually, because the film is awash with symbolism and thought-provoking moments. As a viewing experience for the average intellectual, such as myself, however, I felt that once was enough. The time jumping and abstractions and other critically lauded elements of this movie have been done better and more entertainingly by others. Though this is the most emotionally powerful anti-nuclear statement I've ever seen, for which, as someone who had much of his family die in the Hiroshima nuclear blast, I am profoundly grateful.

Persistence of Memory

[Galina_movie_fan · 9/10 · 15 August 2005]

"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.

A Poem

[evanston_dad · 8/10 · 5 October 2006]

It's nearly impossible to talk about "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" in the same language I use to talk about other films. Even people used to international cinema may find themselves somewhat boggled by this visual tone poem. It's beautiful, and it leaves a distinct impression, but it does so in the way that a striking and unexpected image would, not in the way that an accessible film narrative would. Therefore, it interests without ever fully engaging.

To say that Resnais' film has something in common with silent cinema would be misleading, because sound certainly matters. But the movie definitely feels like a piece of non-verbal cinema, where sensation matters more than cognition.

A movie I probably need to see again to truly appreciate.

Grade: A

The Persistence and the Pain of Remembering

[nycritic · 10/10 · 22 February 2005]

Hiroshima is at the heart of this deceptively simple story. Hiroshima not only as the city which received the fatal bomb on the morning of August 9, 1945, at 9:15 AM, but Hiroshima as the city of Nevers which the woman tries to escape from (but ultimately can't), and Hiroshima as the Japanese man with whom she is having a clandestine affair. The tragedy of the past dresses and undresses them like the ashes seen at the beginning of the film, superimposed on the glistening sweat from the protagonists' lovemaking... an act that will not be repeated after, or throughout the movie. Theirs is an affair that will remain devoid of a fulfilling consummation.

We don't know much about these two people in the beginning: She (Emmanuelle Riva) is in Hiroshima filming scenes for an anti-war movie; he lost his family to the bombing and knows of the pain and the inconsolable loss. The Actress tells him (Eiji Okada) she knows of loss as well, and can identify. At first, we don't know what is under her skin, or why she calmly tells him there will be no more meetings, that he will go away. It is his staying, faithful, by her side, that causes her to slowly peel away at the layers of pain that have lingered just under the surface for 14 years now, eating at her, wanting some form of exorcism.

Rarely has there been such naked intimacy told or filmed on screen in such unconventional manner, de-glamorizing the actors, almost depersonalizing their egos, for the sake of telling a story that took place years ago, but is still present in her mind and soul and is still happening, in an endless repetition, over and over again. Being in Hiroshima only intensifies her grief and overall isolation. Knowing the affair must eventually end and that they will go back to their lives practically turns her to stone in one scene, as morning arrives.

Here is the real tragedy of the story: that we have come to care for both of these people, that they have somehow formed a bond that has been able to rise, like Hiroshima, from the ashes of the past, but that the isolation and inner torment that still rages prevents there being any simple solution -- no Hollywood ending where She will carry out her impulsive decision (that she makes one, to stay, is here, but only in desire, not action), and from what little we still know of Him, no statement that He will leave his unseen, unnamed wife. They will part, and her exclamation near the end: "I am forgetting you already!" is an act, a defense mechanism. She hasn't forgotten the incident at Nevers (which becomes her symbolic name at the end), nor will she forget this man whom at the end has named himself Hiroshima, in remembrance.

A complex view of humans and how they cope when their worlds become tragic

[RunPepe · 10/10 · 11 October 2002]

This film has been compared to "Citizen Kane," not because of the story itself, but the way it is told, and through innovative artistic devices. The screenplay is highly poetic even when describing destruction, death, and madness. Several jump cuts in time occur with voice-over, and, at the beginning, voice-over during a montage of frightening images from the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing and the bodies of the two lovers in bed. The characters represent different cities; the Japanese man, Hiroshima, the French woman, a city in France, Nevers (was this intentional?), but the latter might as well represent any outside nation. While "Hiroshima," even after being destroyed by an "ally" of France, falls in love with her and wants her to stay, despite his claims that she can never know what the bombing was really like, yet leaving this in the past without forgetting, "France" is hung up on a dead Nazi soldier whom she had loved, and became an outcast because of it. What the soldier really seems to represent is not the Nazis, but rather a real, true love that transcended nationalities and associations. France's past is personal and fears forgetting it, while Hiroshima's is communal and, while not wanting to forget, also wants to move ahead. For this reason Hiroshima keeps trying to convince France to stay so that they can be in love, but France is too preoccupied with its own personal ghost that it cannot share, which is why it is a major breakthrough for her when she tells her tragic story for the first time to anyone, Hiroshima. Hiroshima's past tragedy being communal is shared and it wants to share with the rest of the world. France's tragedy is personal and is only beginning to be shared. It takes the entire film before the two characters can get to a beginning of something more than their differences and likenesses of tragedy and loss in the past, and this beginning is who they really are, in the present, two people reborn from these tragedies.

Cold as a Cellar

[Hitchcoc · 10/10 · 21 May 2014]

As a college freshman some 45 years ago, I saw this film in the student union They had a commitment to art films. I have to say that I do remember the stream of dialog between the two characters but little about the content. I knew he (the Japanese man) had lost his family on that August day. I recall her pulling inward as he becomes a bit demanding. Watching it with mature eyes and a fresh view of the world, I was brought back to these two traumatized characters and the war that changed them forever. It begins with a discussion of the Hiroshima museum which contains pictures and artifacts from that fateful day. He keeps telling her that she has not seen Hiroshima as they lay entwined in bed. His pain is more predictable. He lost his family that day while he was away. Hers takes a more melancholy road. As she opens up, she tells the story of a love affair with a German soldier whom she would meet in all manner of places. One day she found him dying, curled up on the ground. She sits with him until he dies. New of their trysts gets out and she is ostracized by her community, her hair cropped, beaten, and thrown in a cellar by her own family. She has not told this story to anyone, including her own husband, until now. While she feels somewhat liberated the pain is too deep. The Japanese man, also married, wants her to stay in Hiroshima. The movie is about the relationship going forward with such damaged people. She repeatedly tries to escape him, but he keeps resurfacing. The sad thing is that she desires him and so it's not as if she is being stalked. Resnais is a master with the camera, using black and white contrasting images, engaging flashbacks, close-ups. One really marvelous scene is where the young woman, who has been playing a small part in an anti-war film, is nearly trampled by protesters carrying signs. Hiroshima is constantly in her face. She has been hurt so badly by the war and is carrying a load of guilt. War carries with it a loss of innocence and pain beyond the obvious. This film really captures this.

A beautiful piece of film making that sets itself apart from other new wave films

[soucmd1 · 23 July 2004]

The comparison between heart break and the Hiroshima bombing is beautiful. The film is about the pain of memories forgotten and remembered. Just as the pain of lost love will be forgotten so too have the horrors of Hiroshima. The scars will always be there but that feeling of pain and isolation as the world celebrates while you mourn will be lost in the past. Lui is helping to rebuild Hiroshima as an architect and Elle has fled Nevers, the place of her love affair with a German soldier. The film represents Frech New Wave in it's reaction against the Hollywood style. The plot is reminiscent of Brief Encounter and Casablanca (they even go to a bar called Casablanca at one point) but the films style is vastly different. Action will jump in time while conversation remains the same, the story jumps around chronologically and we are often unsure of where precisely in time we are. The reason it sets itself apart from other new ave films is it's use of style. Jump cuts and screwing with the chronology are not used because they can be but for a purpose. The chronology is off because the scenes are memories acting like real memories and flowing randomly. The cuts help accentuate how little time these two lovers have with each other before they will be parted. An excellent film well-deserved of it's excellent reputation.

Go see it

[Reine_Nust · 10/10 · 4 May 2005]

This is surely one of the most impressive movies i know. It is also a very impressive portrait of a woman. Don't expect to see an ordinary love story -it is as not so much a love story as a story of a wounded person meeting a wounded city. A story about two people hurt by peace. Even though it is over more than four decennia old it feels surprisingly new. The reason for this must be the beautiful photography -starting with the very first shots of the two lovers- and the deliberate moving away from conventional script writing by Marguerite Dumas. The movie has the feel of an opera, with the music of Georges Delerue as a moving force. I thought it was enchanting, and it stayed with me for days after.

Hard to grasp in the first view

[frankde-jong · 7/10 · 5 September 2021]

In the beginning it was the intention that Alain Resnais would make a documentary about the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, just as he had made a documentary about the Nazi concentration camps ("Night and fog", 1956).

Ultimately Resnais decided to make a feature film based on a screenplay by Marguerite Duras. It has become a feature film with one of the strangest opening scenes I have ever seen. We see a couple making love in extreme close up alternated with documentary footage of the devastations wrought by the atomic bomb. The body's of the couple are being sprinkled with sand, without doubt symbolizing nuclear fallout. On top of that there is a conversation in which the woman claims she knows everything about the bomb because she has visited the museum and participated in the guided tour and the man responds that she knows nothing. This conversation highlights the difference between objective- and subjective (or experiential) knowledge, but the question is when did it take place? It probably isn't their bedtime (love making) conversation, isn't it?

The loving couple is a French woman (Elle / She, played by Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese man (Lui / Him, played by Eiji Okada). Both have suffered from the Second World War. His family was killed by the bomb when he was somewhere else as a soldier. She had a love affair with a German soldier who later got killed and was punished and humiliated after the war.

The love affair with Lui wakes up memory's in Elle about her earlier love affair. As spectator we only become fully aware of this only later in the film. The flashbacks about what happened in France are in long shots and with a static camera, the present in Japan are mainly medium shots and close ups with a moving camera. I think the director wanted to show that the past has been frozen in the memory of the woman while the present has not taken his definite shape yet.

"Hiroshima mon amour" is a well thought out film. It is a film about dialogue and not about action. The dialogue is philosophical and, I have to say it, a little artificial. The two main (or only) characters in essence discuss with each other the reliability of memory and the possibility of real communication. Can a European really understand what has been going on in Asia and vice versa?

I have seen other films with no action and only dialogue ("Locke", 2013, Steven Knight) and also other films revolving around a philosophical theme ("Rashomon", 1950, Akira Kurosawa). In the first mentioned the dialogues definitely were more natural and in "Rashomon" the philosophical question (if "the objective truth" really exists) was asked with more clarity.

Psychoanalysis in Cinema

[BobHudson74 · 10/10 · 4 June 2003]

As a follow up to his monumental documentary "Nuit et brouillard" (Night and Fog), Resnais continues in his war motif with a chilling and powerful statement on the post-modernist, post-war world. An incarnation of a Marguerite Duras screen-play, "Hiroshima mon amour" depicts the confusion surrounding an eracinated and war-stricken people.

Questioning the possibility of Mimesis--"Tu n'as rien vu à Hiroshima. Rien!" (You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing!)-- Resnais rejects the notion of re-creation or imitation, conforming to the philosophies of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida and thus calling into question his own efforts in "Nuit et brouillard." At the same time, he adheres to the Aristotelian ideal that the purpose of Mimesis is the cathartic effect produced by pity and terror, and not merely the representation.

Appealing also to Freudian psychoanalysis, the characters are forced to re-examine the effects of the pathology in attempt to reconstruct the past and determine the cause. (Notice Resnais' use of lighting in the reconstruction scene.) Subtle clues throughout enable the viewer to piece together the story and perform their own psychoanalysis of the situation. A young woman from Nevers, France vows to "never" return to her hometown and the viewer is left to determine the cause.

In my opinion, one of the top ten films of all time, "Hiroshima mon amour" is a work of art that all lovers of cinema must see. Resnais is a cinematographic genius, and his ambivalent depiction of post-war Japan and France in the characters of "Him" and "Her" make this film a cultural landmark as well as masterpiece of post-war, post-modernist art.

"I'm beginning to forget you"

[nickenchuggets · 7/10 · 13 January 2022]

Often considered to be one of the best movies of the French New Wave, Hiroshima Mon Amour has a strange and foreboding atmosphere to it while simultaneously being rather tame by modern film standards. While there's quite a number of sexual scenes in it, it can almost be considered a world war 2 movie because of its title and the backstories of the main characters. The movie starts with a rather long prologue which is narrated by a female voice. In it, we are shown the horrible destruction caused by the first atom bomb that was dropped on japan toward the end of world war 2. Eventually, the prologue ends and the source of the female voice is revealed; a woman played by Emmanuelle Riva. She has no actual name. She's currently in a relationship with a man played by Eiji Okada (who has no name either). Both of them are living in Hiroshima, and it's been over a decade since the war left it a pile of rubble. The female main character is shown to have a great disdain for armed conflict, and goes to work on the set of an anti-war movie. Even though it's revealed her and her lover haven't been together for very long, it is already almost time for them to go their own ways. When night comes, both of them go to a restaurant and tell each other about their past selves. As it turns out, both of them were rather directly involved in world war 2. The girl was raised in the french town of Nevers, a small settlement that was overtaken by the germans when they invaded the country in 1940. Eventually, she found herself wanting to marry a wehrmacht soldier, but he was killed by the americans when the town was liberated. People eventually found out about her relationship with this enemy combatant and punished her by sealing her in her parent's basement for days on end. The man on the other hand explains how he had a much more personal role in the war, and was drafted into the IJA and was away from his home town of Hiroshima the day it got nuked. After the war, both of these characters moved to the city. The man asks the girl one last time if she wants to stay in japan, but she declines as he is already married. While preparing to go back to france, the girl dejectedly heads back to her hotel room, and gets mad when she finds out the man has followed her. She wants to forget about her time with him now that she has to leave, and tells him she's already forgetting his identity. It's then revealed that the nameless characters have the same names as their cities of origin, with the girl being called Nevers and the man being named Hiroshima. Because this movie was a cooperative effort between france and japan, it shows scenery from both nations, although it isn't immediately obvious. While many people consider this film to be amazing, I'll be the first to say that I did not understand the ending. I suppose it means that because the girl represents a french city and her lover represents a japanese one, it's saying how ww2 is over and any hostilities between people from countries that opposed each other during the war should be forgiven. I say this because france was on the allied side during the war (before it was invaded) and japan was on the opposite side, fighting with the nazis. Japanese and french troops never fought each other during the war, but the characters in the movie still might have some resentment towards each other based on their respective country's pasts. Ultimately, the girl has to leave her boyfriend because she already tried having a relationship during the war and it didn't go anywhere. Probably the best thing this film has going for it is its substantial use of ambience. Especially towards the end, there's a lot of scenes that have little talking in them and just choose to display odd camera angles and far away shots of buildings. Apart from these things (and the love story), there isn't really much to this movie. I thought it was passable because of its connections to world war 2 as well as the use of shadows and lighting, but most people today will probably find it pretty slow moving. The majority of old movies are like that, so it can arguably be a benefit.

The Seminal Film for Change

[bybo64 · 10/10 · 3 December 2005]

One would hope a film like this would actually cause humankind to take a step back and to foster the destruction of destruction itself. As Duras noted many years later in her semi-autobiographical "The Lover," she made the distinction early on between those who would exploit and destroy the weak and those who would protect them.

Here we have the exponential dynamic of this distinction in spades, realized in unthinkably tragic dimensions. Put in the simplest terms, "Hiroshima" is war personalized and psychologized in the language of love. It is the lovers' dialogue that begins to rouse the past; it is within the protective bond of love that atrocities can be drawn forth.

It is better to simply see the film than to depend on any synopsis. Once you do, its "medicine" will work within you --- and the medicine to which I refer is love.

Well-Made but Uninvolving

[RobertF87 · 6/10 · 24 January 2005]

This film is an acknowledged classic of World Cinema and I can certainly appreciate that it is a very well-made film and possibly even a great one, but I didn't like it.

The film revolves around a married French film actress (Emmanuelle Riva) who has a passionate affair with a married Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) while she is filming on location in Hiroshima for an anti-war film. The affair triggers memories of the actress' first love affair with a German soldier in occupied France.

The film's main concerns seem to be memory and it's relation to the present and healing. The film is beautifully made with a poetic and elegant screenplay from novelist Marguerite Duras, but it remained curiously uninvolving. All the style and formality prevented any real engagement with the characters. It also suffers from moments of monumental pretentiousness. It is worth watching for World Cinema fans, just because of it's reputation, but others should really approach with caution.

Overtly abstract

[charchuk · 5/10 · 25 October 2007]

It's funny, I don't know if anyone in my class actually liked it; when the prof tried to start discussion on it no one had anything to say. When it came to Breathless, 400 Blows, Jules & Jim, Paris Belongs to Us, any of the other films thus far, the discussion was constantly flowing, but for this film, there was nothing. I don't know if that really means that people didn't like it, but it's not a good sign.

As for me, well..... I've been trying to come up with my reasons, and I'm not sure if I can be any more eloquent than "it was boring". I try never to use that excuse as the main reason to dislike a film, but it was unfortunately true of this film. I was never enthralled or involved with the story or the characters at all; the tale that the girl tells in the middle of the film that takes up a big chunk of it made me feel absolutely nothing at all. I simply didn't care for the characters. I also felt like the Japanese guy was never able to tell his story; I suppose the opening scene showing the tragedy of Hiroshima is kinda his story, but he's definitely not given enough time to express himself. It seems to be to be merely the girl whining for much of the film.

I also had a real problem with the abstractness. I have no real problem with abstractness, but I like there to be something physical for it to build off of. There was none of that here. It was just abstract for the sake of being abstract. I don't know if I didn't get it, but I really didn't care to. I did like the opening scene, as I felt it really got its point across well, but the rest of the film just didn't follow from it.

This is coming across as a really negative review, and I really didn't mean it that way. It wasn't terrible, just pretty disappointing. The use of flashbacks is pretty innovative, and I liked the way it played with image and sound. But the story was weak bordering on non-existent, the characters totally unlikeable, and the themes utterly impassable. I don't think I'll check out Resnais' other work, as if it's anything like this, I don't think I'll like it.

growth, destruction, remembrance

[whitecargo · 7 November 2003]

I. Introduction

This movie has a strong reputation, but I knew very little about this movie before my first viewing. I was only aware that Marguerite Duras, a fine writer, had produced the original screenplay for the movie and that it was considered a literary gem in its own right. The screenplay is one that you can read and enjoy, on its own, even if no movie had ever been made from it (more on this later).

Alain Resnais is the director. I draw it to your attention that this is Resnais' first feature film, and apparently foreshadowed the style of much of his later career. What is clear from this film at least, that he is a gifted, sensitive and unyielding artist. The techniques with which he brings this screenplay to life are rigorous and unflinching. There is love behind what he has done here; you can tell he loves this story and he loves these characters.

II Mechanics

The movie has only two main personalities. The film follows a brief connection between these two people, over the course of approximately 48 hours. It is a very short film, but its a very compacted one; and all its elements are densely fused together --like a diamond or other gemstone. Its aspects are clear, fine, and bright; there is no murkiness or muddle in the ideas of this film. It is not just a rambling 'romance story'. It is literally a movie in which the camera films little more than the memories of two strangers--and the emotional conundrums that expand when their owners meet, and combine. When each faces the growth of a new relationship. The plot is simple; however the emotions are not. Its a complex psychological study and a visual poem.

The setting of the film is extremely succinct: only a few locations contain the entire movie. The journey is rather through an emotional terrain-- a journey of these characters' memories. This inner terrain unfolds (as does everything else in the film) through the dialogue of these two individuals to each other.

The characters are a beautiful French actress doing a location-shoot in the town of Hiroshima, Japan; and a Japanese man she meets there. She has a striking appearance, with a face that is both young and old at the same time; a body that is slim but wizened. Her aspect is alluring and carefree in some shots, but she wears her hair in a mature, classic, manner--almost severe. She is in Hiroshima for a few days only at most. It is 1959. She is about 34, and married, but has allowed herself to be picked up by a sensitive, intelligent Japanese man in a bar. He is an architect. They are spending the night together; many of the camera's opening shots are of their closely-entwined limbs.

Their conversation begins --and becomes--the movie. Its initially a lovers' conversation, as typically happens between a couple lying in bed after sex. They are talking lazily, insouciantly, chuckling with one another over this or that comment, and playing with each other as they rest. Its a very long scene and takes up almost the first third of the film.

What is odd is that the camera doesnt waver--and this is what is intense: the camerawork thrusts you right into this bed and into every expression exchanged between the couple. There is no retreat or pulling-back. There is not a lot of quick cuts between one face and the other either; a few extended shots capture it all. Because the faces are so close to each other (the two figures are almost one) it can be captured in this deft manner.

Its an incredibly daring, bold, ruthless cinema. Very like Bergman. I emphasize it here because it is the filming of the actors' faces, as close as feasibly possible, that characterizes the entire movie. Their faces are the landscape of the whole film: your eyes range and glide over the woman's face in particular, which becomes vast and sombre as she relates fragments of her past life to the man beside her, under his coaxing. The conversation eventually becomes tormented and agonizing.

But you are witness to every muscle tremor, every nerve twitch, you absorb every expression as it flickers across her beautiful, fey complexion. You watch her huge, sad, brown eyes that gaze into space as she talks about herself. Her smiles turn up the corners of her mouth at times, but her face remains wan and stark. She has the ability to display more than one emotion at a time. Excellent casting and astounding performances, particularly from this actress. The work it must have taken to get these close-up shots so precise and correct--the effects are mesmerizing.

I will tell you briefly that the rest of the plot is very simple: the woman rises for her day's filming, but her lover, who becomes increasingly absorbed and obsessed with her, follows her. The last third of the movie is set in the bar they met at the night before, where he attempts to convince her to stay in Hiroshima. (At the end of the film, this is still left ambiguous). There is a montage or two, there are flashbacks deployed which help reveal the woman's past up to this trip to Hiroshima.

III. Meaning

What really goes on here? How can a film survive on a construction of only three basic scenes, and two characters? Well, what happens is that with a human theme of this microscopic focus, the addition of anything more than a few basic sets, scenes, or actions is negligible. Duras, rather, is exploring their souls. Exteriorality simply doesnt matter. The nature of the relationship between the pair reduces everything else to ornament, prelude and ephemera to their contact.

What develops the tension is the crucially important dialogue the pair have with each other. Because of the complexity of the verbal revelations, it is the dialogue that becomes dominant in this film. Its hard to explain. The two people are merely telling each other stories of how they grew up; they talk about where they were the day that U.S. forces dropped the atomic bomb. The man was a soldier in the Japanese army at the time, she was a young girl in a small town in France. She had been in love with a soldier who died. Again, very simple.

But note this: when she speaks to this Japanese man, a wonderful device is used by Duras (and filmed exquisitely by Resnais). She is speaking to the Japanese man but really she is talking to her past lover. So, all is not what it seems. Growth is really destruction, peace is really war, love is really death as seen through the prism of this woman's history--thats why she's in Hiroshima. And it is this 'doubling-over' and multiplicity of character with its symbol that is the heart of this film.

It is a dialogue not just between two lovers but between two people and their pasts. There are surfaces under surfaces. All of the elements are in juxtaposition. All of them are mirrored. All of them are in conflict. All of them are in alignment. The movie swirls with rich, intermeshed images, symbols, allusions, and metaphors.

For example, when the woman speaks of the river Loire that ran by her home, you see (all at the same time) her face, the river, and from the depths of the river, a hand beckoning (and it is the hand which is the memory she is recalling when she speaks of the river). This is but a minor example of the care that went into crafting every scene in this film. Its absolutely grand. I cant say anymore without giving it all away.

Flaws: the one flaw I see in this entire movie is that the dialogue is not always what you would really hear someone speak in real life. The sentences are at times very cumbersome, overly-literate and 'speechy'. It is as if Duras forgot that people dont utter really complex, poetic sentences to each other in real life. The screenplay should have been altered just enough to efface this. At these moments it really would have been better to have been reading the dialogue rather than listening to it; because it just sounds stilted and frail.

And there are times when the poetic images and metaphors are repeated and touched upon excessively--the density of the layers becomes a distraction in itself. Sometimes Resnais or Duras advances a motif, not just two or three times but five or six times, redoubling it in only a very few minutes. It would have been better to have a lighter touch in some places. But these are minor complaints.

IV Conclusion

Overall HMA is an enormously sensitive work of filmmaking. The story itself is moving in a way that should have impact and bearing on everyone, because it is all about self-awareness, and understanding how our hearts function--these are experiences that we all share in.

TS Eliot once said that "April is the cruelest month, because it forces new life up out of the cold earth . . " (my paraphrase). This is a good quote to keep in mind when considering 'Hiroshima Mon Amour'. The Greeks also said something that bears on this film: namely that change is the true nature of the universe. This movie is about self-change. It is about the cruelty inherent in personal growth, in having to shed your bonds with the dead.

HMA is a story about being alive and being human. It is about the pain of loving or losing one's love and the greater torment at having to relinquish that pain we sometimes wish to nurse and hold on to. These are sometimes the effects that loving someone has on your soul; and I will go out on a limb and say that its never been treated better than in this movie. Perhaps 'Last Year at MarienBad' is a close second.

But the emotional signature of 'Hiroshima mon Amour' is wholly unique. The movie is a landmark in cinema.

Audacious in subject matter as well as style...

[Nazi_Fighter_David · 9/10 · 25 November 1999]

Alain Resnais does not neglect the blast of Hiroshima by wrapping it with a simple love-affair...

His film is puzzling, but, at the same time, a compromise, a promise, a pledge to human society... It is too daring by its conventional moral standards, distinguished in the way it was done, written, made and executed...

"Hiroshima, Mon Amour" is about the fortitude of man, with its mental and physical power... Alain Resnais and his writer-collaborator Marguerite Duras combined a love story with an anti-bomb story... They carry out the horror of Hiroshima and the sorrow of a lost first love...

Hiroshima is a tragedy that shocks us, while the lyrical scenes of the the couple's love affair in Nevers makes us cry...

The story of Nevers does not trivialize the story of Hiroshima... We gasp at the tragedy of Hiroshima as we weep over the tragedy at Nevers... We contemplate a cosmic and a personal problem at the same time.

"Hiroshima, Mon Amour" is a new kind of film... It has great technical ability, illustrating hypothesis plus fact...

There is a close-up of Emmanuelle Riva , who has just glanced at Eiji Okada, asleep... Suddenly there is a brief flash-cut of the body of a wounded young man lying in approximately the same position in another place...

Resnais' camera moves like a stream from the present to the past and back to the present... It cuts back to Riva's face, and then back to Okada asleep, and in that split second the technique of the subliminal flash cut, used to describe a character's state of mind, is born...

This cut is the key to the film, for it is the man whom she calls 'Hiroshima' who reminds her of her lover at Nevers...

It is the tragedy of his race that reminds her of the small tragedy of her life...

This identification is carried through in the most neurotic moments of her recitative, when she looks at the Japanese and speaks to him as if he were her German lover of fourteen years before...

"Hiroshima, Mon Amour" reflects image and sound, past and present; the actual and the remembered; the personal and the cosmic; a man and a woman; concern for the individual and concern for mankind...

If I could make one film, this would be it!

[l.mcinerney · 10/10 · 25 November 2000]

Quite simply the most touching, inspiring and turbulent film I have ever seen. Although not as gripping as an action film, this piece causes the same emotional rollercoaster.

Resnais, with only 2 characters and 90 minutes manages to capture the extremes of life. The delight of first love and the passion of lust is opposed by the pitfalls of human nature - the way we forget even those things we try, so hard, to keep hold of.

I understand how many people may find this film tedious, admittedly the narrative is hardly full of excitement however it reflects humanity so perfectly, and so deeply, that the film almost hurt as I recognised so much of my own life within it.

As said, as good as any action film!

Existential romance

[gbill-74877 · 9/10 · 11 October 2018]

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.

Visual tone-poem of love in the shadow of the bomb...

[lhhung_himself · 10/10 · 11 February 2002]

This is one of my personal favorites. The film is not really a (anti)war-film - it is about memories of love and passion amplified and focused by the urgency of war, and unexpectedly re-awakened and re-visited many years later. Sit back and enjoy the visual imagery and the hypnotic sound of the voices and the music as we experience the intensely private and personal emotions of the protagonist. It is almost like a silent movie at times, with the dialogue relegated to the role of the musical accompaniment. But what accompaniment! Duras' prose is almost poetic and it is unfortunate for those who do not understand French that the rhythmic beauty of the language is muted in the subtitles.

The film is definitely not for everyone. It is rather slow; the plot_line non-linear and rather thin (this is admitted in the film itself...), and some of the elements of the film - ie. the peace demonstration are oddly out of place. Some will be unable to identify with the main character, and find her whining "de trop.. ".

Dommage...

Politics and borderline documentary film-making on top of a tragic romantic tale in one of the French New Wave's earliest films.

[johnnyboyz · 7/10 · 1 May 2009]

There are a few sources that I've read on the Internet that herald Hiroshima Mon Amour as the first film of the French New Wave movement of the late 1950s, early 60s. This raises a few interesting points and, if truth be told, I wasn't getting that vibe that so many others seem to be so sure of in regards to the film in question being of the French New Wave variety. I think the sense of that low budget feel is there but this is essentially a romance film, a genre picture if you like. It is a film looking at two people in a relationship but, crucially, taking the time to acknowledge the world around them and how certain events brought them to have this relationship in the first place. It is additionally interesting to note that while it has been known for the French New Wave to take a surrealist look at the youth of the day, Hiroshima Mon Amour likes awfully the notion of looking back into decades gone by at what was and how that contributes to today's world.

That isn't to say Hiroshima Mon Amour is a bad film, it's just Bob le flambeur, for me, is the beginnings of said movement. Hiroshima Mon Amour is more a study of events and people by the people that we study in this film. It is a reconciliation of times gone by and a statement that these things will, hopefully, refrain from happening again. It begins with two people making love or engaging in the act of reproduction as images of the horrific results of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb blast are inter-cut in a sort of odd, juxtaposed series of images displaying acts that introduce life into the world and the results of certain other acts that propel massive amounts of death.

The two in question are Elle (Riva), French for 'She' or 'Her', who's an actress in Hiroshima and Lui (Okada), a Japanese architect who's actually from Hiroshima. A lot of the film is musings by these two people; on life, the global situation, their relationship and their pasts. The film is very concentrated in its study of these two people in this particular city, having this particular relationship and whatever politics it wants to get across it introduces with Elle wanting to quite clearly recognise the Hiroshima disaster and Lui initially just discarding it, something quite surprising for someone Japanese to do; then again, maybe he was just more interested in her than his opinion of his semi-destroyed town given the timing of when the conversation was raised.

What is born out of this opening, which continues combines documentary style footage inter-cut with said people, is a further scene that really points out its political stance and that's a demonstration about the weapon of mass destruction. So you, as do we all when watching, get the picture that the H-bomb was wrong in this filmmaker's opinion which is fine – that's done, what's next? Fortunatley, the film does open up further and didn't become what I was fearing: a dreary and fictionalised account that slips in and out of the documentary thus demanding some sort of artistic labelling just because it 'looks' like an avant-garde piece.

The conversation that I think saves the piece occurs between the two leads as they talk of past activity. Lui points out that he's from Hiroshima and, had he not been fighting in the Japanese army during the war, he surely would've been killed by 'the bomb' had he still been at home. Additionally, had the bomb never have fallen, Elle would not be there working as an actress and consequently, she would never had met Lui. It's a brief but quite an unnervingly optimistic turnaround given all the 'anti' politics the film had given us prior to this. It's a look at hope; something positive born out of something the author clearly stated previously he thought was negative.

But this is it, and I say that with as much positivity as possible. It is a lot of fancy switching from real life footage to two people rolling around in bed. It is a film that wants to say more about the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima than anything else, despite desperately trying to force its way into a genre towards the end when Elle reveals a 'past tragedy' in the sense she loved a German soldier in France during the occupation and suffered at the hands of others when word got out and the war ended. All of that feels included for sake of a runtime, something I didn't expect I'd be coming away from "the film that started the French New Wave" thinking. But the film is solid overall; it has that uncanny feel to it – that feel and that clear sense of inspiration. It is most things from 1942's Casablanca to 1995's Before Sunrise, meshed into one and with a political agenda. It is a tragedy at the end of the day and rather impressively, I think we feel for those who lost their lives in Hiroshima that day in August 1945, as well as for the two leads themselves when certain revelations become apparent right near the end – which in itself is a pretty impressive achievement.

The poem that wanted to be a film.

[ranchi · 10/10 · 27 May 2017]

This movie isn't a movie. It's a poem. When poetry becomes film you get this kind of masterpieces. It's a slow-paced, beautifully shot, heartbreaking love story. It's a touching, human, meaningful film about oblivion. Duras' prose is just unbelievably poetic and Riva's performance as an independent –yet so attached to her lost lover– woman brings the film to a new level of groundbreaking way of storytelling. The dialogues between her and Okada are about things we've all thought and felt every now and then. It takes place in Hiroshima fifteen years after the bomb and I find it brilliant how the movie talks about the global tragedy that was the dropping of an atomic bomb and the personal tragedy that is to lose and try not to forget the man you loved. As it is the script what struck me the most, I personally don't think this is as much as a Resnais' film as it is Duras'. Almost 60 years already. Everyone with a major role in the movie is gone. But they are not dead. They just became "Hiroshima Mon Amour". Might we not forget them.

Never forget

[evening1 · 6/10 · 26 December 2021]

How intriguing to meet a male character who listens so intently to a female! Yet, Lui (Eiji Okada) also wants to deny the musings of Elle (Emmanuelle Riva) about atomic devastation to his hometown, Hiroshima.

I haven't seen a male character so curious about a woman's ruminations/madness since "El amor brujo" of 1986. (If only life would mimic film in this way!)

Here we encounter the shocking aftermath of the atomic bombing -- in documentary film clips, human carnage shocking to view. We also see evidence of a clean-up, in tour guides navigating a sanitized war zone.

But devastating memories dominate the present day.

We see this in the reminiscences of Elle, who lived through Nazi occupation of her hometown of Nevers. For having a German-soldier lover -- shot dead on the day of liberation -- she's thrown by her parents into the cellar, penalty for comforting the enemy.

An oddity in this Hiroshima-based film is the use of French. Lui speaks it fluently, ostensibly because he;d wanted to study the French Revolution. Yet, during a protest rally, marchers carry anti-bomb placards in French! (Did director Alain Renais doubt that viewers would tolerate subtitles?)

For a sign of how far we have evolved, see the movie poster for this film -- Okada isn't even mentioned!

I'm glad I saw this icon of the French New Wave, but it would have benefited from editing. Elle's musings about life in the cellar drag on for too long. Still, one admires her depth.

Mémoire Mon Amour

[cinephile_12 · 10/10 · 9 March 2007]

Hi-ro-shi-ma in montage is how Resnais begins his famous (or infamous) film about love's forgetfulness. With cinematography at its best, Resnais displays an extraordinary juxtaposition between the main woman-character's past romance with Hiroshima's past destruction. While the French-woman and the Japanese-man present the "current" love affair of the movie, Hiroshima Mon Amour actually takes place beyond the couple. Primarily dealing with the past, but looking forward to the future, the main characters, really the French-woman but including Hiroshima, deal with their histories even if they are forgotten. The terse, poetic dialogue unfurls the story's complexities with absolute grace, but still leaves much to the imagination. The cinematography is resplendent, but desolate; dreamy, but honest; innovative, but elementary; and above all: beautiful, but heartbreaking. Even to-day, there is not a film like this. Comparable only to itself. To not see this film: is to not see the world of celluloid from all of its seemingly-diversified angles. This film is so different, you may not like it the first time you see it. I didn't. But it warrants subsequent viewings. Absolutely. Then it allures you. Beckons more. If you're going to see a film - see a film. See Hiroshima Mon Amour.

Great cinematography and meaningful existential message save film from sketchy story and character development

[Turfseer · 6/10 · 30 November 2021]

A perusal of many of the internet reviews of Alain Resnais' first feature marks it as quite a polarizing film. For many, either you loved it or hated it. For those who couldn't stand it, I would still argue that it has some very impressive cinematography as well as an interesting existential message for us all.

Nonetheless I must agree that the relationship between the two principal characters, the French actress Elle (Emmanuelle Riva) and Japanese architect Lui (Eiji Okada), is absurd. We're introduced to this couple who are having a quickie affair in Hiroshima as Elle is finishing up her role in an Internationally funded peace film featuring protests against spreading nuclear proliferation throughout the world.

Elle just has a day left before she flies back to Paris but Lui is so besotted with her that he wants her to stay in Hiroshima. If you believe in "love at first sight" and lovers bonding after only knowing one another for a few hours, then you'll buy this idea of an improbable whirlwind romance.

But it soon becomes obvious that Resnais doesn't have much of a desire to flesh out his characters but rather aims to deliver a deep existential message about the ultimate meaninglessness, disappointment and tragedy of life.

Resnais' visually masterful introduction, which includes footage of Hiroshima atomic bomb victims, features a male voice castigating the female narrator that she can never truly grasp the enormity of the tragedy despite being able to view the tangible memories of the event which can be clearly seen as we follow tourists viewing various artifacts on display at the Hiroshima Museum.

While the collective devastating nature of the deadly bombing is revealed at the beginning of the film, Elle imparts her own personal tragedy to Lui growing up in the French Town of Nevers. There she fell in love with a German soldier who was part of the occupation force, only to view him gunned down on the day of liberation.

Elle finds that her relationship with Lui has rekindled her feelings for the long gone soldier and reawakened memories that she had long forgotten. Ultimately the passage of time makes us all realize about the insubstantiality of life and that once we die the memory of our existence, deeds and actions will eventually be forgotten. The same could be said for the tragedy of Hiroshima-despite the previously alluded to "enormity" of what occurred.

Resnais probably could have made his point in less than the hour and 45 minutes shown here. By the time the couple grapples with the issue of staying or not staying, we've really seen enough.

Riva, who went on to be an actress of great stature, is excellent in the role of a woman with all the rekindled memories leading to a great deal of cognitive dissonance. Okada remarkably didn't speak a word of French and memorized all the lines phonetically. Unlike Riva's part however, we never find out exactly why he falls so hard for this woman except for the fact that she's extremely intelligent and sensitive.

For those who didn't like the film, I would urge you to upgrade your ratings considering the excellent cinematography and the exploration of some profound existential messages. For those who liked the film, why not downgrade your rating a bit?-because after all, these are hardly fleshed out human beings!

Tedious. Pretentious. Unwatchable. Supposedly groundbreaking, but I think that ground's been broken by better people a long time ago.

[davidlglover · 1/10 · 13 February 2012]

I'm honestly puzzled at what people find good in this film. I haven't read a single positive review that actually says anything other than "groundbreaking", "a watershed" and other overworked clichés. I would really like someone to tell me what, precisely, they think is so good about it. Maybe I'm missing something, or am just not interested in whatever-it-is.

I can't even see that it was exciting in 1959.

The biggest thing wrong with it is this: the characters are two-dimensional. You get no real sense of them as people. Even their nominal professions (he an architect, she an actor) get no depth. The scenes where she's supposedly on the 'set' of her 'movie' were laughable. In short, I didn't care about what happened to them. As it turns out, more-or-less nothing does.

One thing that was totally true-to-life was their interminable "let's have one more night"/"let's never see each other again"/"let's be together forever" to-ing and fro-ing over their third or fourth or fifteenth beer. Yes, just as tedious and shallow as the real thing: playing this Saturday night at any convenient bar in your town.

I can't recall a movie I've enjoyed less.

I kept waiting for something - anything - to happen. It didn't. All we get is a few more flashbacks to the sketchy 'what I did during the war' back-story. Everything is superficial. None of it was interesting or insightful.

The friends I saw it with (at a screening at the NSW Art Gallery) all agreed. We've worked out a code to escape in the future. If you're giving this movie a try, I recommend you do the same and spare yourself the tedium.