Hiroshima Mon Amour (Hiroshima, My Love) poster & wallpaper

Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada

1959. A French young woman has spent the night with a japanese man, at Hiroshima where she went for the shooting of a film about peace. He reminds her of the first man she loved. It was during World W...( read more  read more... )ar II, and he was a German soldier. The main themes of this film are memory and oblivion.

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89% liked it

7,624 ratings

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18 critics

Unrated, 1 hr. 31 min.

Directed by: Alain Resnais

Release Date: May 16, 1959

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DVD Release Date: June 24, 2003

Stats: 551 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (551)

  • pier007
    October 10, 2008
    pier007
    Haunting, intimate and ultimately anguishing cinematic poem that works in dichotomies such as documentary-fiction, japan-france, river-sea, man-woman, cinema-literature, past-present.
    Emmanuelle Riva is gorgeous, and Resnais narration is innovative, paused and wildly emotional.
  • ebs90
    April 27, 2008
    ebs90
    A French actress shooting a film about peace in Hiroshima meets a Japanese man in a bar. They decide to go together. They fall in love. The woman describes to the man her past in France: her adolescence, her first love, her first loss, her madness.

    The backdrop of Hiroshima, M...( read more)on Amour, is obviously the horrors left behind by the atomic bomb. The woman herself acknowledges the irony of falling in love in a place like that. The images of disease and misery, in contrast with the lovers', constitutes a great deal of the poetry the film involves.

    Throughout most of the story, both characters are shown in moments of intimacy: either having face-to-face conversations, or in bed, sharing their deepest secrets and most bizarre thoughts. In a way, their love is born out of interest, or need: both characters have survived tragedies (linked also to the war in one way or another), and that particular point in common is what brings them together. They find in each other a space of trust to let out their pain. They re-imagine the situations of their past including the other: their connection is so profound that it seems, as they often repeat, impossible to envision life without the other.

    Hiroshima Mon Amour is a very experimental, poetic film. Alain Resnais's masterpiece is the precursor of such beautiful films as Before Sunrise, or Lost in Translation, or A Man and a Woman, only that the waters here run deeper and darker. Resnais shapes his characters out of the cries and the loss of World War II, showing his audience just how much damage the conflict caused. Thousands of stories of abandonment behind the faces of 2 characters. At the same time, it's also a film that exemplifies with unbelievable beauty the mystery of love: The relationship between the leads is unforgettable, epic, transcending chemistry or compatibility. But why in Hiroshima? Why this man, or this woman? Why now? Resnais manipulates their memories, their perceptions, time, and space, to create one of the most intense love stories I've ever seen onscreen, even when the most evident expression of physical love he allows himself to show is but a kiss.

    The image of the woman's hand on the man's back is an icon of French new wave, and one of the most significant representations of intimacy world cinema has ever produced.
  • Jungian
    April 14, 2008
    Jungian
    I've seen this many, many times. One of my favorite films. a story about memory and how it affects our sense of identity.
  • jplong39
    March 20, 2008
    jplong39
    Lyrical tale of forbidden love amidst the atrocities of war
  • doboy1
    December 5, 2007
    doboy1
    I read that the scenes in this flick of disfigured people is an act. I'm sure lots of people there died, but this movie is not really about them .
  • ElCochran90
    October 17, 2009
    ElCochran90
    "- Hi-ro-shi-ma. Hiroshima. That is your name.
    - Yes, that is my name. Your name is Ne-vers. Nevers in France."

    HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959)


    Director: Alain Resnais
    Country: France
    Genre: Drama / Romance / W...( read more)ar
    Length: 90 minutes

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    Whereas in France back in the 50's and having its greatest peak in the 60's with films from highly recognized and talented directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut a cinema movement called The French New Wave was born, Alain Resnais took a completely different path. Hiroshima mon Amour is not only critically acclaimed and recognized because of being a classic and complex masterwork within the genre or because his complex narrative structure, but also because it established an important and notorious benchmark within French cinema, making a greater emphasis in the psychology of the characters which are found in rather pretentious environments. Another excellent example is the film that Resnais directed two years later, called L' Année dernière à Marienbad (1961), making a major analysis of the details of the small world that surrounded each character.

    Hiroshima mon Amour is set in the Japan of 1959, where a French woman is filming a film about peace. One night, she meets a Japanese architect and has an intense affair with him for a whole night. Once these events conclude and once she has finally finished her job, he asks her so stay with him in Hiroshima because of his fear of not seeing her again. Hiroshima mon Amour got an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen and was nominated for a Golden Palm in the Cannes Film Festival of 1959.

    Alain Resnais stepped away from any possible cliché before actually finishing his film, which is among the most remarkable aspects that can be found in his style of direction and in his vision. It ain't surprising that in the first 15 minutes of the film the disasters that Japan went through at the end of World War II and the horrendous results that several populations had are shown in a documented style. In fact, Hiroshima mon Amour was planned as a documentary in the first place. Marguerite Duras had a pretty much heavy influence for constructing this gem and turning it into a feature film with a plot, creating one of the most beautiful scripts I have ever seen in my whole life. The power of words can really be very impressive, even in a movie.

    The style of filmmaking that the introduction of the film had is very faithful to the filmic style of the documentary called Nuit et Brouillard, which was directed by Alain Resnais 5 years before and is one of the most important and powerful documentaries about the Holocaust, being filmed in Polish concentration camps. I agree with the fact that, somehow, adding documented sequences of real footage adds a lot of emotional weight to the atmosphere of the story. The art of creating these sequences comes from the care the director has with adding real footage and/or images and from noticing if these really fit in the story and the plot that you as a filmmaker are treating. Alain Resnais really hit the nail in this aspect.

    The cinematography is really spectacular. There is not a more beautiful thing than appreciating a good cinematography that goes hand in hand with a director who has a well established vision behind a camera with a varied, epic and deep perspective about life and about how beautiful or devastating reality can sometimes be. This is definitely the director's most representative masterpiece even nowadays, being his last directed film Les Herbes Folles (2009). Although the edition is not a relevant element within the filmic style of this gorgeous golden jewel, the photography, the direction, the two leading performances, the screenplay and even the original musical score make up for it. Both performances by Emanuelle Riva as "Elle" and Eiji Okada as "Lui" are outstanding, each one of them focusing on their characters in the most possibly believable way.

    The camera work is extremely beautiful. Besides the already mentioned cinematography, it is the camera work itself the one that transports us to the streets to Japan back in the 50's, moving along with such harmony and simplicity that it ends up being fascinating. Only a genius could have seen so much artistic beauty even in the cruelest and most depressing images, just like Pier Paolo Pasolini managed to do it in his film Salò, o le 120 Giornate di Sodoma (1975). Stepping away from the French New Wave, Alain Resnais is clearly influenced by the neorealism developed in Italy during postwar times thanks to giants of cinema such as Federico Fellini (La Strada [1954]), Vittorio de Sica (Ladri di Biciclette [1948]) and Roberto Rosellini (Roma, Città Aperta [1945]).

    Finally, the time has arrived to start talking about what Hiroshima mon Amour really is:

    The filmic beauty of Hiroshima mon Amour emanates from the fact that the film can be interpreted in almost any way; any theory one may have about what actually is being portrayed on the screen, or a simple version of a spectator about what is the real subject matter of the film, or a recount one may make of all of the events that took place in the film, can be either correct or put to discussion by anybody. More than just a film, Hiroshima mon Amour is a gorgeous piece of art.

    Hiroshima mon Amour portrays, as far as my taste dictates me, two main tragedies: a global, wide tragedy and a personal tragedy. One of the main topics of Hiroshima mon Amour is catastrophe depicted at both levels. On one side, the internal tragedy of Elle is portrayed. She is a 32 year old woman lost in herself, a more seductive than a beautiful one, who feels an impulsive necessity of being totally dominated by his Japanese lover. This is most noticeable when she speaks the phrase: "Deform me to the point of ugliness". A sense of perdition, of an anxiety of surrendering to the emotional abandonment of her existence and of being completely conquered is present in her the whole time. The loss of her first lover, a German soldier she fell in love with back in World War II is the obvious ending of a stage of her life so she can start a new one. From all of this one can also come to the conclusion that all of what she says may not be entirely true, but she may not be completely lying either. What probably the film insinuates is that she wants to add extra drama or tragedy to the unpleasant (and somehow traumatizing) moments she once lived, or to the ones that had a bigger impact in her life.

    On the other hand, we have the character of Lui, a Japanese engineer involved in politics who is around his forties. He is a man who doesn't entirely believe in romance or in love affairs, but definitely believes in opportunities. The opportunity of having an intense romance with Elle that is given to him is so strong, that he takes full advantage of it, discovering along the way that the emotions can lead anybody to an endless and unpredictable turmoil of unique consequences, and to a dependence towards our feelings that sometimes may lead to impulses that we as humans do not know how to control. He comes to a point where he creates such an obsession, that he blindly and desperately (without mentioning erroneously) discovers that she belongs in his life and discovers a new "meaning" of love, so he constantly follows our lost and confused female protagonist wherever she goes. He probably knows just as well as she does that such "relationship" can't fully work, but the anxiety that distinguishes their psychology for trying to find out where they may en up being once that they are controlled by such a unique and powerful thing that probably he never felt in his life before is so strong, that he is blinded from all possible rational perception and applies for a reality based on fantasy.

    When both characters are together, they share and exploit a common characteristic: the desire of being completely conquered, not only romantically, but rather they prefer being dominated. Dialogues such as "You saw nothing at Hiroshima", in spite of the fact that she has actually been there, simply show that both characters want to hand themselves in oblivion, each one of them having their personal particular reasons which they don't really want to discover, nor precisely remember what actually happened during the war, what actually happened in Hiroshima, what actually happened in Nevers, what actually happened with their respective childhoods, and how their romantic relationships have been so far independently of the other person.

    Just like Hiroshima mon Amour shows tragedy on different levels, the film shows two noticeable endings, very different between them, regarding the subject matter treated in the film. The first ending is shown once the first 15 minutes of the film have ran, which put together form one of the best scenes in movie history that I have ever seen: Hiroshima's reconstruction and the search of peace from the people, event in which is Elle is involved. It could be said that that's her excuse for being there. The second ending happens in the last scene of the film, where the most controversial dialogues are spoken: "Hi-ro-shi-ma. Hiroshima. That is your name." He responds "Yeah, that is my name. Your name is Ne-vers. Nevers in France". The symbolic-psychological context that these dialogues contain may lead us to think that both characters accept a new, fresh start, a new beginning, which is exactly the same process that Hiroshima is going through. It's like if the film went around in circles, reason why I think that Hiroshima mon Amour ends with the opening scene. That's why Alain Resnais assured that time in his film is shattered and randomly scattered throughout from beginning to end; it is not a chronological story.

    The music employed in the film adds mysticism and an extraordinarily mysterious beauty. It is definitely the first film of this kind that Alain Resnais ever made. I dare to say that it has the most beautiful original musical score I have ever heard in a film, since it is perfectly related with catastrophe, peace, perdition, the emotions of the characters, with the beginning of a new life, with a lost love. The score is just outstanding. I recommend hearing it for the first time within the context of the film rather than listening to it separately, so in that way we can really understand the musical's score meaning. One can really be hypnotized and forgets about the rest of the world for a couple of minutes.

    For all of the reasons above, Hiroshima mon Amour is more than just cinema. It is an artistic form of showing a reality that can even probably go beyond our own comprehension, and the complex range of emotions that distinguishes us as rational, romantic and cruel human beings. This is the most beautiful film ever made.

    100/100
  • Phonex
    October 5, 2009
    Phonex
    A French Masterpiece.
  • jimbotender
    July 14, 2009
    jimbotender
    Time is a thief,a delinquent of impeccable proportions.Hiroshima is the counterpart of Casablanca for most critics,to be fair...I don't think this is something universal since both these films have met equal opponents and masterpieces ever since the dawn of romance films..
    But wi...( read more)th Hiroshima...Duras dictated to Resnais that Amour isn't a possessive object,it's rather the location that causes it to be possessive between 2 lost souls.
    A kiss is all that remains...
  • JSS62
    July 14, 2009
    JSS62
    Suspense, adultery...
  • williamhunt2
    June 5, 2009
    williamhunt2
    Resnais' recurring themes surface here: 'memory', 'conscience', 'guilt', 'time' and 'space'. By using flashbacks to change cinema's concept of subjective time Resnais created a groundbreaking movie.

    The opening of this film is special as well, showing images of the horror after...( read more) the Hiroshima bomb and mixing them with beautiful extreme shot close-up photography of bodies in an intimate love scene.

    But above all Resnais challenges us on the reliability of our memory. He would do the same in some of his other films; 'Muriel ou le temps d'un retour' or more recently in 'Smoking / No Smoking'.

    Resnais likes to give social criticism as well and that's present here too. We follow the story of a French actress who starts a brief relationship with a Japanese architect in Japan. When they are together they examine past horrors that are shown in flashback: the architect about the Hiroshima bomb and the French woman (played by Emanuelle Riva) about things that happened to her in occupied France. We never hear their names as the Japanese architect is named 'Hiroshima' by his lover and Riva is called 'Nevers' (the city where she comes from). 'Nevers' mentions that she never wants to return to France but she eventually would since their relationship is doomed to fail.

    Both charachters are forced to re-examine the effects of the horrors they experienced by reconstructing the past. In a way this is a very psychological, even Freudian movie. This puzzling film deserves more than one view.

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Comments

  • panchof28
    September 24, 2006
    panchof28
    a diferent look at the WWII... a beautiful and powerfull film
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