This is a story about beginnings and endings about rebirth following tragedy. Moreover this is a story about memory. Fifteen years after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima a film crew arrives to make a film about peace. The actress in this film meets and has an intense affair with a Japanese man she meets in a bar on the night before she is to return to France.

In a startling series of flashbacks we learn of her love for a German soldier that left her ostracized in her native Nevers, France. The story, which all takes place in a twenty four hour period is striking because of its emotional impact. The atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima and the WWII romance destroyed the womans life. Now is the time to grow and to be reborn. Rebirth takes place through a confrontation with our memories of the past. A facing of the things that made us what we are. This is the sense the viewer takes from this film.

The Criterion DVD has an excellent transfer of the print which is presented in its original monural sound. The extras on the disc deserve a look. There is an excellent commentary by film historian Peter Cowie that helps to explain the marriage of film and literature between Resnais and Duras while offering some anecdotal technical information. Also included are vintage interviews with Alain Resnais and star Emmanuelle Reve. A 2003 interview with Reve is a highlight of the disc and should not be missed. The annotated selections of the script are also worth a brief look.

Anyone interested in the history of film should do themselves a favor and view this important film classic.


A remarkable depiction of remembering and forgetting   December 20, 1999
 27 out of 32 found this review helpful

Hiroshima, Mon Amour is the screenplay for the classic French film directed by Alain Resnais. This is one of the few screenplays I truly enjoy, as Hiroshima is a wonderful story about remembering and forgetting set in the context of post-nuclear war and love.

True to the classic stream-of-consciousness style of Duras, this screenplay is a highly emotional account of a French woman's journey to Hiroshima to film an anti-war movie and the affair with a Japanese man that ensues. Throughout the course of the affair, the woman is struck with the memory of her German lover during WWII and the insanity that his death brought on.

In many ways, this is Duras at her finest. She has an uncanny ability to take specific stories and bring them to a level of universality as far as human emotion and circumstance are concerned. This is a powerful and riveting tale that is not to be missed.


Deep Emotional Connection?   October 13, 2002
 15 out of 36 found this review helpful

I have been reading these glowing reviews and i can't help but wonder if we all saw the same film. "Hiroshima Mon Amour" is a tedious and pretentious film. So many of the past reviewers spoke of the deep emotional connection between the two lovers, but it seems they're seeing what they want to be there and not what is. All I saw was a clingy man badgering a woman until she spilled her guts and then he couldn't get her to stop talking if he wanted (and the scary part is he did not want her to stop).

Another misconception I've read over and over is this film is about the suffering about BOTH the Riva and Okada characters, but it isn't. The Okada character tells his French lover his entire family died in Hiroshima and he was in the army. It was all over in 20 seconds. But Riva's character blathers on for nearly the rest of the movie about losing her German lover during the war. And this all brings me to the latent racism of the film: Only a European or an American could make a film with Hiroshima in the title, set it in Hiroshima and have one of the main characters a Japanese man who lost everyone dear to him in Hiroshima, but the movie isn't really about Hiroshima (though a lot of people seem to be under the impression it is equally about that as the French town of Nevers). Apparently Resnais and Duras felt the French character's story was more emotionally worthy and the Japanese character, despite the rich possibilities, should just act as a sounding board. Resnais could have really set the picture anywhere.. London, or Delhi, or St. Louis, or La Paz. At least then he wouldn't have been patronizing the experiences and pain of the Japanese victims of the atomic bomb.

Overall I think all these 5 star reviews are by people who think they should like it because of the message(who could argue against an anti-war message), or because they've been told they're supposed to like it if they have any intelligence at all. I just find it incredible so many people got through this picture with a straight face.


french new wave - crashing bore   October 8, 2003
 15 out of 46 found this review helpful

At the time of this writing, there was only one one-star review amidst the 5 and 4-star accolades. I'm writing this in support of the one who had the courage to stand alone against the cinematic intelligentsia who find powerful meaning and artistic beauty in this film.
After reading such superlatives as, "one of the most influencial films of all time", I had to check it out. I'll admit that I'm not a fan of foreign film in general and my exposure to older European cinema consists of "Metropolis","Night and Fog","The Seventh Seal" and "The Pasion of Joan of Arc", but I can appreciate each of them for their artistry and contribution to cinema. "Hiroshima Mon Amour" was to me, a failed experiment.
On the surface, it seems to be a story about a self-absorbed French nymphomaniac, Elle, slowly loosing her mind as she reveals her past to a casual sex partner, Lui, that she's just met in Hiroshima. They're both "happily married", which in 1959 apparently meant that all adulterous encounters were limited to one-night stands. In spite of their powerful connection, they both know that a lasting relationship is out of the question. As she pours her heart out to him in a bar, sometimes she talks about the past as if it were the present, other times she doesn't. She describes a forbiddden love affair with a German soldier (during WWII) and how she was tortured by her family because of it; someone shaves her head and confines her in a cellar. She talks to Lui as if she is reliving her past and he is the German soldier. So what does Lui ask her after hearing this? He wants to know if it ever rained. She replies, "Along the walls". What have these people been smoking? Director Resnais fails utterly to make any of this understandable. I've read that this story is about memory and how without it, we can't know that we exist. If you suddenly woke up with your memory wiped clean, you'd be mightily confused, but you'd know that you exist; "I think, therefore I am". In the film, Lui says to Elle, "In a few years when I have forgotten you...I'll remember you as the symbol of love's forgetfulness". I'll remember when I've forgotten?? You're a symbol of love's forgetfulness...whom I remember?? Yeah, OK, now if I can just remember to forget this film.


Remembrance, pain, and love.   March 31, 1999
 14 out of 17 found this review helpful

Hiroshima, Mon amour is a film that explores the idea of memory: what is to forget, and what is to remember? What is experience and what is reconstruction? Do we have total control over these notions, and do we need to have control over them? With the Hiroshima bombing tragedy as the layout of the film, Resnais and Duras mock the European (and maybe the Japanese themselves through the museum and other memorial things that they built) understanding of what had really happen there. Universally, the story then focus on the conflict of understanding that the Riva character is suffering in when she gets herself involved with the Okada character, thus revealing her past to him as they both struggle into creating their definition of what love is. Is it enough to compare one's suffering to others' when their sufferings are more 'horrific' in nature? Not only that this film tries to answer this question but it also brings out lots of other questions on our common humanity. A complex and very intellectual film, but one should be warned (or should be aware of its implication from Resnais and Duras) of the passive nature of time from the Riva character's subjectivity too when watching the film.