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Hiroshima mon amour
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Hiroshima mon amour
Original 1959 movie poster
Directed by
Alain Resnais
Produced by
Samy Halfon
Anatole Dauman
Written by
Marguerite Duras
Starring
Emmanuelle Riva
Eiji Okada
Stella Dassas
Pierre Barbaud
Music by
Georges Delerue
Giovanni Fusco
Cinematography
Michio Takahashi
Sacha Vierny
Editing by
Jasmine Chasney
Henri Colpi
Anne Sarraute
Distributed by
Path Films
Release date(s)
France:
June 10, 1959
United States:
May 16, 1960
Running time
90 minutes
Country
France / Japan
Language
French / Japanese / English
Hiroshima mon amour is an acclaimed 1959 drama film directed by French film director Alain Resnais, with a screenplay by Marguerite Duras. It is the documentation of an intensely personal conversation between a French-Japanese couple about memory and forgetfulness. It was a major catalyst for the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave), making highly innovative use of miniature flashbacks to create a uniquely nonlinear storyline.
The title literally translates from French to English as 'Hiroshima, My Love', though the film is almost always referred to by its original French title.
Contents
1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Production
4 Reception
5 Film references
6 Cultural errors
7 In popular culture
7.1 Music
7.2 Film
8 References
9 External links
[edit] Plot
Hiroshima mon amour concerns a series of conversations (or one enormous conversation) over a 36-hour long period between a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva), referred to as she, and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada), referred to as him. They have had a brief relationship, and are now separating. The two debate memory and forgetfulness as She prepares to depart, comparing failed relationships with the bombing of Hiroshima, and the perspectives of people inside and outside the incidents. The early part of the film recounts, in the style of a documentary, but narrated by the so far completely unidentified characters, the effects of the Hiroshima bomb on August 6, 1945, in particular the loss of hair and the complete anonymity of the remains of some victims. He had been conscripted into the Japanese army, and his family was in Hiroshima on that day.
The film uses highly structured, repetitive dialogue, mostly consisting of Her narration, with Him interjecting to say she is wrong, lying, confused, or to deny and contradict her statements with the film's famous line "You are not endowed with memory". Although He disagrees and rejects many of the things She says, he pursues her constantly. The film is peppered with dozens of brief flashbacks to Her life; as a youth, she was shamed and had her head shaved as shaming and punishment for having a love affair with a German soldier, which she juxtaposes with the loss of the hair "which the women of Hiroshima will find has fallen out in the morning."
[edit] Cast
Emmanuelle Riva as Elle
Eiji Okada as Lui
Bernard Fresson as L'Allemand
Stella Dassas as La Mre
Pierre Barbaud as Le Pre
[edit] Production
According to James Monaco, Resnais was originally commissioned to make a short documentary about the atomic bomb, but spent several months confused about how to proceed because he did not want to recreate his 1955 Holocaust documentary Night and Fog. He later went to his producer and joked that the film could not be done unless Marguerite Duras was involved in writing the screenplay.[1]
The film was a co-production by companies from both Japan and France. The producers stipulated that one main character must be French and the other be Japanese, and also required that the film be shot in both countries employing film crews comprising technicians from each.[1]
[edit] Reception
Hiroshima mon amour earned an Oscar nomination for screenwriter Marguerite Duras, as well as a special award at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival,[2] where the film was excluded from the official selection because of its sensitive subject matter as well as to avoid upsetting the U.S. government.[3]
Hiroshima mon amour has been described as "The Birth of a Nation of the French New Wave" by American critic Leonard Maltin.[4] New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard described the film's inventiveness as "Faulkner plus Stravinsky" and celebrated its originality, calling it "the first film without any cinematic references".[5] Filmmaker Eric Rohmer said, "I think that in a few years, in ten, twenty, or thirty years, we will know whether Hiroshima mon amour was the most important film since the war, the first modern film of sound cinema".[6]
Among the film's innovations is Resnais' experiments with very brief flashback sequences intercut into scenes to suggest the idea of a brief flash of memory. Resnais later used similar effects in Last Year at Marienbad.
[edit] Film references
In his book on Resnais, James Monaco ends his chapter on Hiroshima mon amour by claiming that the film contains a reference to the classic 1942 film Casablanca:

Here is an 'impossible' love story between two people struggling with the imagery of a distant war. At the end of this romantic, poignant movie about leave takings and responsibilities, the two fateful lovers meet in a cafe. Resnais gives us a rare establishing shot of the location. 'He' is going to meet 'She' for the last time at a bar called 'The Casablanca' - right here in the middle of Hiroshima! It's still the same old story. A fight for love and glory. A case of do or die. The world will always welcome lovers. As time goes by.[1]

[edit] Cultural errors
In Japan Journals: 1947-2004, film historian Donald Richie tells in an entry for 25 January 1960 of seeing the film in Tokyo and remarks on various distracting (for the Japanese) cultural errors which Resnais made. He notes, for example, that the Japanese-language arrival and departure time announcements in the train scenes bear no relation to the time of day in which the scenes are set. Also, people pass through noren curtains into shops which are supposedly closed. The noren is a traditional sign that a shop is open for business and is invariably taken down at closing time.[7]
[edit] In popular culture
[edit] Music
The film has inspired several songs. One was written by John Foxx and Billy Currie, and initially recorded and performed by their band Ultravox! in 1977. One recorded version of the song is a romantic electronic ballad, notable for showcasing an early use of the Roland TR-77 drum machine in popular music. Ultravox! also recorded a different arrangement of the song, in an aggressive punk style. This version was covered by the band The Church on their all covers, garage inspired album "A Box Of Birds" (1999). A more recent version in-between the two styles was recorded and released by Jan Linton (under the name dr jan guru)in 2004.
The heavy metal band Alcatrazz also recorded a song titled "Hiroshima Mon Amour" on their debut album, No Parole from Rock N' Roll.
In 2003, the New York-based no wave band My Favorite released "Burning Hearts," which draws upon the main characters in the film.
Punk rock band The (International) Noise Conspiracy's album The Cross of My Calling features a song entitled "Hiroshima Mon Amour."
In 2002, Bryan Ferry released the album Frantic which includes the song "Hiroshima", where the chorus includes the full sentence of "Hiroshima Mon Amour".
[edit] Film
In 2001, Japanese film director Nobuhiro Suwa directed a remake, titled H Story.[8]
In 2003, Iranian film director Bahman Pour-Azar released Where Or When. The 85-minute film places Pour-Azar's characters in the same circumstances as Resnais' nearly a half century earlier. However, the current global tension of today's world is the backdrop instead of post-war Hiroshima. When screening the film, Stuart Alson, who founded the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival, said that the piece was "a parallel line of work with the French masterpiece "Hiroshima mon amour".
[edit] References
This article cites its sources but does not provide page references. You can help to improve it by introducing citations that are more precise.
^ a b c Monaco, James (1979). Alain Resnais. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-520037-3.
^ "Festival de Cannes: Hiroshima Mon Amour". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/3472/year/1959.html. Retrieved 2009-02-14.
^ Lanzoni, Remi Fournier French Cinema: From Its Beginnings to the Present, London: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 2004, p229
^ Maltin, Leonard (1995). "Alain Resnais". Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia. Plume. p. 744. ISBN 9780452270589. http://www.skutski.org/resnais.html. "Resnais's first 35 mm feature Hiroshima mon amour (1959)  in 1946, he made a 16 mm feature Ouvert pour cause d'inventaire  dealt with the nature of history and memory, and deviated from traditional notions of narrative time as it recounted a fleeting liaison between a French actress and Japanese architect. Its sexual candor and provocative ideas, wedded to a dazzlingly sophisticated visual style, made Hiroshima, Mon Amour the New Wave's The Birth of a Nation and it deservedly won the Cannes Film Festival International Critics Prize."
^ in Michael S. Smith, "Hiroshima Mon Amour", DVD release review in Popmatters.com
^ Kent Jones, "Time Indefinite", essay for the Criterion Collection DVD release. Accessed 23 May 2007
^ Richie, Donald Japan Journals: 1947-2004, Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2004, p126
^ "Festival de Cannes: H Story". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/2001433/year/2001.html. Retrieved 2009-10-19.
[edit] External links
Hiroshima Mon Amour at the Internet Movie Database
Hiroshima Mon Amour at AllRovi
Hiroshima Mon Amour at the TCM Movie Database
Kent Jones, "Time Indefinite", Criterion Collection essay
v  d  eFilms directed by Alain Resnais
Feature films
Hiroshima mon amour  Last Year at Marienbad  Muriel  The War Is Over  Je t'aime, je t'aime  Stavisky  Providence  Mon oncle d'Amrique  Life Is a Bed of Roses  Love Unto Death  Mlo  I Want to Go Home  Gershwin  Smoking/No Smoking  Same Old Song  Not on the Lips  Private Fears in Public Places  Wild Grass  You Haven't Seen Anything Yet
Short films
L'Aventure de Guy  Schma d'une identification  Ouvert pour cause d'inventaire  Visite  Oscar Dominguez  Visite  Lucien Coutaud  Visite  Hans Hartung  Visite  Flix Labisse  Visite  Csar Domla  Van Gogh (1947)  Portrait d'Henri Goetz  Le Lait Nestl  L'Alcool tue  La Bague  Journe naturelle  Van Gogh (1948)  Malfray  Les Jardins de Paris  Ch?teaux de France  Guernica  Gauguin  Statues Also Die  Night and Fog  Toute la mmoire du monde  Le Mystre de l'atelier quinze  Le Chant du styrne  Segment "Claude Ridder" in Far from Vietnam  Segment "Wall Street" in L'An 01
v  d  eFrench New Wave
Directors
Fran?ois Truffaut  Jean-Luc Godard  ?ric Rohmer  Claude Chabrol  Jacques Rivette
Left Bank
Henri Colpi  Marguerite Duras  Armand Gatti  Chris Marker  Alain Resnais  Agns Varda
Other filmmakers
Jacques Demy  Jean Eustache  Louis Malle  Jean-Pierre Melville  Luc Moullet  Jacques Rozier  Roger Vadim
Influences
Alexandre Astruc  Andr Bazin  Robert Bresson  Jacques Doniol-Valcroze  Henri Langlois  Joseph-Marie Lo Duca  Jean Vigo  Pierre Braunberger
Key films
Le Beau Serge (1958)  The 400 Blows (1959)  Hiroshima mon amour (1959)  Breathless (1960)  Clo from 5 to 7 (1962)  Adieu Philippine (1962)
Related topics
Auteur theory  Cahiers du cinma  Cinmathque Fran?aise  Jump cut
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Categories:
French films
Avant-garde and experimental films
1959 films
1950s drama films
1950s romance films
Films directed by Alain Resnais
Romantic drama films
Films about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Films set in Hiroshima
Films shot in Hiroshima
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Articles lacking page references from September 2010
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