Rent Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)

Memory Film. - Hiroshima Mon Amour review by Steve

Alain Resnais’ debut feature is an innovative arthouse masterpiece which changed the language of cinema while also functioning as a memorial to the atrocity at Hiroshima in 1945. It’s a French/Japanese co-production shot by crews in both those countries which explores the ‘horror of forgetting’.

The picture is dominated by Emmanuelle Riva, playing what she is; a French actor in Hiroshima to make a film for the peace movement. She falls in love with a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) and to an extent this is a poetic romance with incredibly lyrical dialogue by Marguerite Duras, suggestive of TS Eliot.

And this is sensual and intense with extraordinary photography. Resnais’ master stroke is to understand that the aftershock of the detonation of atomic bombs is too overwhelming to be confronted directly. So he sublimates the emotions it provokes into a subplot about the actor’s love for a German soldier in WWII.

The way it cuts between reality and memory is extremely evocative. The subliminal flashbacks are now ubiquitous. It is more art than entertainment, yet it is seductive. This is an allegory which challenges our empathy and intuition. It attempts to keep the memory of a monstrosity alive so it may never happen again.