Hiroshima Mon Amour | Marguerite Duras | A French Masterpiece about Memory and Forgetting.

Hiroshima Mon Amour | Marguerite Duras | Sleeping with the Enemy

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Hiroshima Mon Amour

	Hiroshima Mon Amour Marguerite Duras Grove Press, 1994 - 112 pages average customer review:based on 61 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Jacket description/back: One of the most influential works in the history of cinema, Alain Renais's Hiroshima Mon Amour gathered international acclaim upon its release in 1959 and was awarded the International Critics' Prize at the Cannes Film festival and the New York Film Critics' Award. Ostensibly the story of a love affair between a Japanese architect and a French actress visiting Japan to make a film on peace, Hiroshima Mon Amour is a stunning exploration of the influence of war on both Japanese and French culture and the conflict between love and humanity.

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A French Masterpiece about Memory and Forgetting.

French film director Alain Resnais is best known for Night and Fog (1955), Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), and Last Year at Marienbad (L'année dernière à Marienbad) (1961). Based on a script by novelist Marguerite Duras (also known for The Lover), Hiroshima Mon Amour tells the story of a torrid relationship between a married French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a married Japanese architect (Eiji Okada). They become passionate lovers while the actress performs in an anti-war film set in post-war Hiroshima. He reminds her of her first love. Using innovative flashbacks (a technique Resnais also employed in Last Year at Marienbad), the poetic film explores the woman's repressed memories of her German lover killed in World War II, and the later consequences of that relationship following the war. The film is ultimately a meditation on memory and forgetfulness. Just as the woman will forget her experiences in Nevers, France, with the passing of time the couple will also forget their love affair in Hiroshima. The film's ending is profound, confronting the very nature of oblivion.

Why makes Hiroshima Mon Amour a masterpiece of French cinema? Leonard Maltin has called the film "The Birth of a Nation of the French New Wave" due to its innovative techniques that helped inspire the movement. Calling it "the first film without any cinematic references," Jean-Luc Godard has described the film's innovations as "Faulkner plus Stravinsky."

The Criterion edition of this film features a new high-definition digital transfer; audio commentary by film historian Peter Cowie; an interview with Alain Resnais (1961); an audio interview with Alain Resnais (1980); Emmanuelle Riva interviewed by François Chalais at Cannes (1959); excerpts from Duras' annotations to the screenplay; isolated music and effects track; a new essay on the film by Kent Jones; a new essay on composer Giovanni Fusco by Russell Lack; new and improved English subtitle translation; and optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition. Highly recommended.

G. Merritt

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Sleeping with the Enemy

"Hiroshima Mon Amour" is a groundbreaking French New Wave movie. It begins with the French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) passionately making love.... then it cuts to the horrors of the atomic bomb. The viewer goes from the boudoir's pleasures to war's pain. It's a daring,powerful,opening sequence, and probably not something likely to be seen in the movie theater nowadays,let alone an art house one.

"Hiroshima Mon Amour",Alan Resnais' masterpiece, has a non-linear sense of time. The French actress is in Japan in the '60s to make an antiwar film. Though she's married, she carries on a brief,passionate affair with a married Japanese architect. Not only does marriage divide them,but culture and the memories of war. The actress reminisces about her brief affair with a German soldier in Nevers (the name is fitting) during WWII. She is deeply pained and conflicted.

"Hiroshima Mon Amour" is a meditative movie about the nature of forbidden love. While "sleeping with the enemy" is used for titillation in recent films like Paul Verhoeven's "Black Book" and Ang Lee's "Lust Caution",Resnais sees the Frenchwoman's affair as a jumping-off point to look into its deeper implications. It brings a whole new meaning to the '60s motto "make love,not war."

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The inaugural event of the French Nouvelle Vague

Godard anointed it "Faulkner meets Stravinsky". That should be enough of an evaluation. But if you insist...

Hiroshima Mon Amour is equally beautiful and baffling. The challenge of the film is its narrative structure, which fluidly blends past and present through bursts of flashback. You might say that the form of the film is a cinematic attempt at capturing the mechanism of memory at work (who can really know if it was a successful attempt, memory is a subjective experience).

Marguerite Duras' screenplay is chillingly spare, but a subtle beauty, Sacha Vierny's cinematography, with all its graceful tracking shots is the work of a master, and Emanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada, the handsomely paired couple at the center are played with tenderness and sympathy, and eventually a bitter edge. Alain Resnais pulls them all together for a film that is something of a revolution.

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Hope rises from the ashes

9 seconds
200,000 dead
80,000 wounded

Those figures are horrific. In the first half this movie dwells on this tragic but often avoided piece of history. The stats and images presented here are heart-breaking.
In this monumental film, a French actress and a Japanese architect are having a brief affair, plus they discuss their own personal torment from the past and present.
I'll admit, I was totally engaged with the first part of the movie, which concentrates on the after-effects of that devastating day. But then it trails off into the love-stricken past which haunts the actress. This lost my interest a little bit.
Still, this is a profound cornerstone of French cinema, hailed as one of the most influential films of all time. It has a dark premise and is eloquently shot. Oscar-nominated for best screenplay.

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Is It A Documentary? Is It a Movie? We'll Never Know.....

Part of my fascination for this French film is the fact that it never once makes it clear if its either a documentary or a feature film. On one hand, you have the unlikely romance between a native Japanois and a French beauty, and their slow, languid conversations are definitely the highlight of the movie. On the other hand, the opening half hour is a montage of post-bomb Hiroshima and the fallout, complete with LIFE Magazine stills and graphic details of genetic complications ensuing in future Japanese generations.

The good thing is that ALL of it is interesting, but I can understand some of the negative reviews here that compare this to the works of Antonioni who sacrificed everything in the name of slowness. Thankfully, the performance Alain Resnais extracts from his leads here is nothing short of masterful. The Japanese actor, in particular, elevates the film to a whole other level, as he appears to be an Eastern Commentator who is readily acceptable by the European audiences (thanks in part to his ability to speak the French language).

"Hiroshima Mon Amour" works as a photo exhibition of sorts. Despite its fragmentation, its very well crafted, and obviously a sincere work of art. Its got its heart in the right place, and if at all you enjoy watching black and white French films, this one clocks in at a close second, preceded only by the works of Marcel Carne (and honestly, how could ANYTHING be better than Carne?)

Criterion has done another remarkable job of cleaning up an old print. The care given to the print is masterful, and there is not the slightest smudge or visible grain anywhere. The audio is crisp and clear, though do remember that the primary voice here is of the female lead. She almost single handedly provides commentary for the first half hour of the movie, and it is to her credit that the film unravels and presents itself as a bonafide classic.

A Superb Effort by Criterion.

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