Hiroshima Mon Amour - Criterion Collection | Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada

Hiroshima Mon Amour - Criterion Collection | Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada | How can you be happy in Hiroshima?

DVDs:

Hiroshima Mon Amou...

	Hiroshima Mon Amour - Criterion Collection Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada Criterion, 2003 average customer review:based on 60 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

One of the best French "new wave" movies

This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

"Hiroshima Mon Amour" or "Hiroshima my love" is one of the most well-know films of the French new wave and defiately one of the best.

It is the story if a French actress working on a film about peace post war Hiroshima, Japan and has a fling with a Japanese architect. The relationship reminds her of a previous relationship she had with a german soldier during the war.

The film is very well photogaphed and has some very nice scenes of the Peace park & museum as well as footage taken after the actual bombing. It has excellent acting also and remains popular to this day. The husband of a friend of my mother's in Switzerland says that this is one of his favorite films.

The DVD has some great special features too.

There is audio commentary by Peter Cowie, an isolated music an effects track, two interviews with director Alan Resnais an interciew with lead actress Emmanuelle Riva, as erll as an essay about Giovanni Fusco who composed the film's music.

This release is a must buy!

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How can you be happy in Hiroshima?

The action occurs in little more than twenty four hours ; a dream like prologue composed of brief shots of naked torsos intercut with shots of a hospital and museum , newreels of Hiroshima 's atomic devastation , footage from a 1953 documentary Japanese film Hiroshima (directed by Hideo Sekigawa ) , a reenactment of the holocaust , and views of the rebuilty city .
Both lovers are happily married . And they decide to trust one to another . But the memories of destruction and the unhappiness environment is a serious obstacle for them to think about the happiness in the middle of the hell and destruction .
Hiroshima mon amour shared with the Venezuelan film Araya the International Critics Award and received the Film Writers Award . It also shared with The four hundred blows (1959) a Prix Meliés. Universaly praised the film received the New York Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Film (1960) and Marguerite Duras was nominated for an Oscar for Story and Screenplay - written for the Screen in 1960.

The film 's central theme is the memory and forgetfulness ,a sinister leitmotif repeated in hypnotic mood . All experiences in time are subject to oblivion . She is an actress (rebuilding of the emotive memory) and he is an architect (rebuilding of new landscapes, the perfect motive for destroy and dream with a new future).
The characters are superb depicted , complex and changing . And one more detail : I have seen this film year after year , and the film , far from getting old , it renews itself , that is the best proof for stating we are in front one of the landmark film in the screen .

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Just a great film

It is heavily montage so a great deal of the film unfolds and you feel that it is being very quick and efficient with it's time and story. At the same time, the dialogue and story that's being told seem to take their time, it's an interesting artistic choice. The film seems absurdist at times because we don't know what to believe. In the beginning the two lovers speak, but it's more a amicable verbal battle. The female declares something and the male denies it. In a way, that's the entire film and possibly a dissection of human relationships, but it's definitely a representation of how people come to grips with the tragedy that ended WW II. I heard this film came about originally posed as a specifically documentary short film, similar to Resnais previous film, Night and Fog. This film is just as anit-war, but is far more complex. I can't get into it right now, but if you'd like see what I mean check it out. It's certainly an intriguing film even after you've seen it.

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Imperfect masterpiece

Alain Renais experimental approach to the narrative structure of 'Hiroshima mon Amour' is one of the finest efforts in cinema history. Whether or not you believe this movie succeeds - you can only admire the approach and the beautiful cinematography of this - Renais first feature. The theme of forgetting or trying to forget is one of the most thought provoking ways of looking at a society (watch Fassbinder's 'Marriage of Maria Braun' for another brilliant take on this theme). The opening montage of images is very unique and beautiful - as shocking as the opening to Bergman's 'Persona'. Anyway, I would reccomend viewing this one and forming your own opinion - which you will inevittably do.

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yyyyeeaahhh...

i'm pretty sure i didn't get this movie. it was well acted and, at times, very heartbreaking.. but the ending caught me completely off guard. also, i can't really relate to being hopelessly in love with a japanese business man in hiroshima. maybe someday.

aaand i'm also going to have to disagree with most of the other reviewers on this board - this movie had the goofiest, most disjointed and unnerving soundtrack i've ever heard. sometimes it was spot on, and there were some very beautiful pieces.. intermixed with the.. uhh.. goofy, calliope, monkey-organ-grinder music. i don't understand the rationale behind scoring love scenes and scenes of regret and depression with that type of arrangement. no matter how serious the moments in the film get, all i can picture is shirley temple riding a carousel with a dwarf and three pigs in party hats.

but that's probably another example of me not getting it. i'm not saying this movie is bad - by all means, rent it or buy it or view it somehow and decide for yourself - but don't be too shocked if you're dumbstruck by the end.

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