Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)

Directed by Alain Resnais.
Starring Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada.

In a Nutshell: An actress and architect conduct an affair in postwar Hiroshima.

Hiroshima Mon Amour; a film heralded for helping to birth the French New Wave and one of the most innovative film narratives since Citizen Kane. Éric Rohmer predicted that Hiroshima could be recognized as, “the most important film since the war, the first modern film of sound cinema.” Lofty, but justified praise. The shifting blend of time, memory and reality becomes the domain for Alain Resnais and writer Marguerite Duras to exploring the relationship of two adulterous lovers in postwar Hiroshima. She (Emmanuelle Riva) is a French actress in an international peace film. He (Eiji Okada) is a Japanese architect who experienced the bomb’s destruction firsthand. They have a passionate, anonymous love. Later, they discuss the pain residing in their lives, in an extended two-day conversation.

When Rohmer spoke of Hiroshima’s reputation, he may not have foreseen Resnais’ influence through fracturing and shuffling time. Sometimes, it amounts to an interesting experiment (Last Year at Marienbad). Here, Resnais is more personal. Hiroshima observes two people whose lives have been ripped apart from their private involvement with the war. He lived through Hiroshima; a tragedy shared by millions. She recounts her punishment for her carefree affair with a German officer, glimpsed in fragmented flashbacks. It is never clear how much was real and how much was distorted by memory.

When the film opens, both are swept in the moment’s embrace as newsreel footage of Hiroshima fills the screen. They speak openly about the lives lost, the destruction, their own place in this turmoil. It is a vivid evocation of how absolute the past is within our present and how sorrow and ecstasy become one. This theme winds through the couple’s talk with the woman’s past unexpectedly resurfacing among Japan’s collective remembrance. Riva defines the film’s soul; unsure how to reconstruct her life with the big picture looming in the foreground. Resnais meshes the horrifying mundane of Japan’s ghost town with delicate surrealism to move with Riva’s sadness. While sidestepping any grand historical proclamations, the film defines what it means to bear emotional scars; what they meant then, what they mean now, particularly in a nuclear age. The world has long since recovered from World War II, but Resnais and Duras’ work will always speak for our anguish and uncertainty, past, present and future.