Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)

From the measureless depths of a woman's emotions...

The deep conversation between a Japanese architect and a French actress forms the basis of this celebrated French film, considered one of the vanguard productions of the French New Wave. Set in Hiroshima after the end of World War II, the couple -- lovers turned friends -- recount, over many hours, previous romances and life experiences. The two intertwine their stories about the past with pondering the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb dropped on the city.

Directed by: Alain Resnais

Written by: Marguerite Duras

Music by: Georges Delerue, Giovanni Fusco

Starring: Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada, Stella Dassas, Pierre Barbaud, Bernard Fresson

Genre: Drama, History, Romance

Released: 1959-06-10

Runtime: 92 minutes

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Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959): trivia & fun facts

Fun facts

• In 1954, while Alain Resnais was editing Agnès Varda's film La Pointe Courte, he was reluctant to work on it because it was "so nearly the film he wanted to make himself".
• The uncensored version of the film was shown at the Montreal International Film Festival in 1960, but was censored for its Canadian theatrical release.
• 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 1956 Holocaust documentary Night and Fog.
• In a 1959 round-table discussion among Cahiers du Cinéma editorial staff, filmmaker Éric 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."
• He later went to his producer and joked that the film could not be done unless Marguerite Duras was involved in writing the screenplay.
• The film's narrative structure inspired Hiroshima mon amour.
• For her work on the film, screenwriter Marguerite Duras was nominated for the award for Best Original Screenplay at the 33rd Academy Awards.
• Weiler wrote of Resnais: "As a director who set himself an extremely difficult task, he expertly sustains the fragile moods of his theme most of the way."

Source: Wikipedia

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