Hacker Cinema
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Hiroshima mon amour
1959 · Film · 92 min
Directed by Alain Resnais
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.
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6 comments on Hacker News
Thanks! Here's the full list: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 8½, Aguirre the Wrath of God, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, All That Heaven Allows, Apocalypse Now, Ashes and Diamonds, A Woman Under the Influence, Barry Lyndon, Bicycle Thieves, Breathless, Casablanca, Céline and Julie Go Boating, Chinatown, Chinese Roulette, Citizen Kane, City Lights, City of Pirates, Contempt, Daisies, Damnation, Dishonored, Earth, Electra My Love, El Topo, Eraserhead, Eyes Wide Shut, Film Socialisme, Fitzcarraldo, Fuego en Castilla, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Holy Motors, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, In a Year with 13 Moons, India Song, Inland Empire, Irma Vep, Koyaanisqatsi, La Dolce Vita, La Jetée, Late Spring, L'Eau de la Seine, Le Voyage dans la Lune, Lolita, Los Olvidados, Lost Highway, Lucifer Rising, Man with a Movie Camera, Metropolis, Mirror, Mulholland Drive, Night Music, Ordet, Orpheus, Persona, Pickpocket, Playtime, Psycho, Rebecca, Rosemary's Baby, Rumble Fish, Scarface, Seven Samurai, Sherlock Jr., Singin' in the Rain, Stalker, Sunset Boulevard, Taste of Cherry, Taxi Driver, Testament of Orpheus, The 400 Blows, The Blood of a Poet, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Color of Pomegranates, The Green Ray, The Holy Mountain, The Isle, The Lady from Shanghai, The Night of the Hunter, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Seventh Seal, The Spirit of the Beehive, The Tales of Hoffmann, The Tree of Life, The Turin Horse, Time of the Gypsies, Tokyo Story, Touch of Evil, Trans-Europ-Express, Ugetsu, Un Chien Andalou, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Vampyr, Videodrome, Wavelength, Werckmeister Harmonies, Wild Strawberries, Moonlight Sonata, Stellar, The Haunted House Biased toward European art cinema, experimental work, and directors who broke conventional narrative rules.
Let me offer you some not Canal+ French films I've enjoyed: Breathless; Hiroshima Mon Amour; Diva; My Life as a Zucchini; Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles; The Rules of the Game; Last Year at Marienbad; La Collectionneuse; The Green Ray; One Sings, the Other Doesn’t; The Kid with a Bike; The 400 Blows; My Night at Maud's; The Wages of Fear.
I adore Last Year at Marienbad. Although I agree with Sofia Coppola that it's inevitably a movie where I doze off a little. That's alright since the entire film is like a weird dream. It's refreshing having a film that resists interpretation so intensely. It's utterly surreal, beautiful and tragic, yet without having a singular "correct" reading. Rashomon and Last Year at Marienbad would be an excellent double billing.
Hiroshima Mon Amour is another fantastic film. In both films Resnais is so brilliant in his editing, in its non-linearity, in its emotional effect. Frankly he might be one of my favorite directors of the Left Bank/New Wave generation.
I'd love a good literature class where we intersperse classic and contemporary writing. Often times I wonder how much of the subtext I am missing due to my ignorance of the classics. It'd be a lot of fun to read some Ralph Ellison, then a Chang Rae Lee novel.
After all in film, an area I'm a little better with the classics (although not entirely—I have massive gaps), it's really fun to point out the allusions and inspirations. The deep focus multi-narrative comedy of errors that is The Rules of the Game begets the combinatorial explosion of country music that is Nashville begets the post modern family drama of Yi Yi begets the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Or how non-linear editing in Hiroshima, Mon Amour could lead to Petulia.
I'm not so sure you can find as many groundbreaking, experimental movies at the forefront of film in 2017-2020. Movies like La Notte or Hiroshima Mon Amour or Winter Light just wouldn't get distribution these days. Don't get me wrong—I agree that there's plenty of wonderful films made in the last three years. But in the 60's and 70's film was willing to be as risky and innovative and beautiful as the finest novels. I'm not sure that's true today
Dreyfus was my favorite Berkeley professor, and taught my favorite undergrad course, Existentialism in Literature and Film, in which he introduced me to Kierkegaard, Camus, Marguerite Duras's Hiroshima mon amour, and Graham Greene's The Third Man. His Heidegger class was also great, and there he also introduced us to Maurice Merleau-Ponty. I loved his lectures and he was also a nice guy... a lot nicer and more approachable than his also famous colleague John Searle.