Hiroshima Mon Amour

I finally got around to seeing Alain Resnais' New Wave classic, Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). It is an extraordinary film and Resnais' debut as well. It is the story of an affair between a French woman (Emmanuel Riva) in Hiroshima making a film about peace who has an affair with a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada). The history and legacy of Hiroshima is prominently displayed in the background especially in the beginning sequence which includes documentary like footage with film footage taken from Japanese films on the subject. The novel-like script was written by acclaimed writer Marguite Duras There is another storyline-that of the young French woman's experience as the lover of a young German soldier during the occupation of her hometown Nevers. The Japan sequences and France flashback footage are filmed by different cinematographers-Michio Takahashi and Sacha Vierny respectively. The score and ambient sounds of the film standout as well. The Criterion features include: new 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack, audio commentary by film historian Peter Cowie, interviews with director Alain Resnais from 1961 and 1980, interviews with actor Emmanuelle Riva from 1959 and 2003, new interview with film scholar François Thomas, author of L’atelier d’Alain Resnais, new interview with music scholar Tim Page about the film’s score, Revoir Hiroshima . . . , a 2013 program about the film’s restoration, new English subtitle translation, and an essay by critic Kent Jones and excerpts from a 1959 Cahiers du cinéma roundtable discussion about the film.