Hiroshima Mon Amour (15.)
Directed by Alain Resnais. 1959
Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Eija Okada. Black and white. 90 mins. Released on blu-ray for the first time by Studiocanal.
Hiroshima Mon Amour is a film about the war time horror of dropping an atomic bomb on the civilian population of Hiroshima. To emphasise this the two characters take an almost fetishistic delight in repeating the name, Hiroshima. They say Hiroshima over and over again, only stopping when she talks about her native France. It is also, at least partly, a film about the pain of forgetting, even if the thing being forgotten is a wartime horror, like Hiroshima.
Resnais first dramatic feature after a decade of making documentaries was a benign, well intentioned war crime that has not been forgotten or subsumed by the passing of time. On location in Hiroshima to make a film about peace, a married French actress has a brief affair with a married Japanese architect whose family died in the atom bomb blast at the end of the second world war. The affair drags up painful memories for both of them but the real poignancy is that they have managed to go on, to cope, that no matter how shattering an event seems life goes on; any atrocity or war crime can eventually be contained and subsumed within the human experience.
The juxtaposition of this rather precious and conceited love affair with the horrors of the destruction and aftermath of an atomic blast is a crass idea but it works. Indeed the crasser it gets, the better it works. The opening quarter hour is footage of Hiroshima with the female outlining all the terrible things she has experienced in Hiroshima, and the male telling her that she has experienced nothing in Hiroshima. It is indecently effectively, illustrating the reality of dropping the atomic bomb while simultaneously arguing that we can never truly understand what happened there.
After that the film becomes a much more conventional piece of French cinema – a walking/ talking/ drinking film. The pair traverse Hiroshima, reveal secrets and stare moodily into the distance. It's tres French and tres arty, but not intolerably so – it's not as stiff and rigid as Last Year in Marienbad, there's humanity in it. It also looks far better than a black and white film made on a shoestring has a right to. This is partly down to a 2013 4K restoration of the original print but mostly down to Resnais having a great eye for capturing the beauty of the modern concrete blocks that made up most of Hiroshima in 1959, awkward gate crashers trying desperate to look like they belong there.
There a certain cultural imbalance to it though. Marguerite Duras' script allows Emmanuelle Riva, bearing a strong and disconcerting resemblance to Virginia McKenna, to expound at great length about her delicate crimes with a young Fritz on the banks of the Loire during the final days of WWII; Eija Okada doesn't get to tell about the family he lost during the war and is mostly restricted to begging her to stay.
Extras.
Two 12 minutes features – one on the 2013 restoration of the film and an interview with Riva reminiscing about the making of the film.
Directed by Alain Resnais. 1959
Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Eija Okada. Black and white. 90 mins. Released on blu-ray for the first time by Studiocanal.
Hiroshima Mon Amour is a film about the war time horror of dropping an atomic bomb on the civilian population of Hiroshima. To emphasise this the two characters take an almost fetishistic delight in repeating the name, Hiroshima. They say Hiroshima over and over again, only stopping when she talks about her native France. It is also, at least partly, a film about the pain of forgetting, even if the thing being forgotten is a wartime horror, like Hiroshima.
Resnais first dramatic feature after a decade of making documentaries was a benign, well intentioned war crime that has not been forgotten or subsumed by the passing of time. On location in Hiroshima to make a film about peace, a married French actress has a brief affair with a married Japanese architect whose family died in the atom bomb blast at the end of the second world war. The affair drags up painful memories for both of them but the real poignancy is that they have managed to go on, to cope, that no matter how shattering an event seems life goes on; any atrocity or war crime can eventually be contained and subsumed within the human experience.
The juxtaposition of this rather precious and conceited love affair with the horrors of the destruction and aftermath of an atomic blast is a crass idea but it works. Indeed the crasser it gets, the better it works. The opening quarter hour is footage of Hiroshima with the female outlining all the terrible things she has experienced in Hiroshima, and the male telling her that she has experienced nothing in Hiroshima. It is indecently effectively, illustrating the reality of dropping the atomic bomb while simultaneously arguing that we can never truly understand what happened there.
After that the film becomes a much more conventional piece of French cinema – a walking/ talking/ drinking film. The pair traverse Hiroshima, reveal secrets and stare moodily into the distance. It's tres French and tres arty, but not intolerably so – it's not as stiff and rigid as Last Year in Marienbad, there's humanity in it. It also looks far better than a black and white film made on a shoestring has a right to. This is partly down to a 2013 4K restoration of the original print but mostly down to Resnais having a great eye for capturing the beauty of the modern concrete blocks that made up most of Hiroshima in 1959, awkward gate crashers trying desperate to look like they belong there.
There a certain cultural imbalance to it though. Marguerite Duras' script allows Emmanuelle Riva, bearing a strong and disconcerting resemblance to Virginia McKenna, to expound at great length about her delicate crimes with a young Fritz on the banks of the Loire during the final days of WWII; Eija Okada doesn't get to tell about the family he lost during the war and is mostly restricted to begging her to stay.
Extras.
Two 12 minutes features – one on the 2013 restoration of the film and an interview with Riva reminiscing about the making of the film.
