Summary
A young French actress is making an anti-war film in the rebuilt Japanese city of Hiroshima,
which was devastated in a nuclear bomb blast at the end of the Second World War.
Here, she has an affair with a Japanese architect, even though both of them are happily
married. The actress admits that she will soon have to fly back home to Paris, but
she spends one last night with her lover. At a café, she recounts the story
of her first tragic love with a German soldier during the war....
Review
This is an exceptional film, marking Alain Resnais’ debut as a film director, after a
decade of producing eye-opening short documentaries. Indeed, Hiroshima mon amour
started out as a documentary about the reconstruction of Hiroshima, and the first
fifteen minutes of the film uses documentary footage to great effect to set the scene.
As in many of his subsequent films, Resnais uses his unique approach of weaving memories
and actual events to create an illusion of ghostly timelessness. Phrases are repeated
again and again, the camera pans listlessly along lifeless scenery, and dialogue is played
over documentary footage of the rebuilding of Hiroshima. The overall effect leaves
a profound impression of regret and self-inflected torment, perfectly captured by Emmanuelle’s
emotionally charged performance.
A central theme of the film is the necessity to come to terms with the horrors of the
past. Both characters in the film (the actress and the architect) have painful memories
of the war, and their liaison seems to represent some kind of rapprochement between East
and West. "You are Hiroshima. You are Nevers" is how the film ends, suggesting
that the torment of the Hiroshima disaster, like the painful love affair, will one day
be forgotten.
Few films leave such a lasting impression as Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour.
The stunning photography of contemporary Hiroshima, blended with bleak images of war-time
France, is pure art, brought to life by a moving musical score. Whilst lacking the
structure of the conventional film form, this film offers an experience that is supremely
more satisfying and profoundly moving.
© James Travers 2000
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