“Integrating past and present, poetic images and documentary footage, music and Marguerite Duras’ dialogue, the film achieved a structural balance of such emotional and intellectual power that audiences were stunned.”
“Arresting, beautiful and poetic incantation on memory, time and identity”
“Though made in the late 50s, Hiroshima’s imagery and music give it a feel at once modern and timeless, this is a beautiful piece of work.”
A cornerstone film of the French New Wave, Alain Resnais’ first feature is one of the most influential films of all time. A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a brief, intense affair in postwar Hiroshima, their consuming fascination impelling them to exorcise their own scarred memories of love and suffering.
Utilizing an innovative flashback structure and an Academy Award-nominated® screenplay by novelist Marguerite Duras, Resnais delicately weaves past and present, personal pain and public anguish, in this moody masterwork.
France/Japen * 1959 * 91 mins * Not-rated (mature subjects) * French and Japanese with English subtitles
