Alan Resnais could well be considered the patriarch of French New Wave — even though at 42 he was middle-aged to be leading the movement. Most of the prominent directors of this revolution (if you will) were more likely to be in their latter 20s to early 30s. Nevertheless, Hiroshima, Mon Amour was Resnais’ first full length feature and it took the world by storm! In fact, during July, 1959 fellow New Wave artist and director Jean-Luc Godard proclaimed that Resnais’ first major creation was: “the first film with no cinematic references” and along with the other movement collaborators such as Eric Rohmer and Pierre Kast agreed that Hiroshima, Mon Amour was “quite the cinematic watershed”.
Among all of the innovations for which this film is known, perhaps the most striking aspect (as well-known, present day film critic Michael S. Smith has also noted) is that Resnais completely dispensed with a huge aspect of traditional method storytelling … the linear narrative! That being said, Resnais was much more interested in what was called a “stream of consciousness” or “experience through memory” rather than having all elements of the narrative following a strict pattern of events in sequence or by a calendar’s sense of time.
The beginning of Hiroshima, Mon Amour quickly became famous for it’s jumble of images which initially did not seem to match up, along with a documentary style which blurred the distinction between truth and fiction. Probably the two most startling impressions of the film’s opening are the juxtaposition of highly bizarre images such as the ashes of nuclear fallout (which could have also been mistaken for grains of sand), then the intense closeup showing the sheen of sweat on skin. This turns out to be a couple in the throes of lovemaking, but for a few minutes it’s hard to be sure what is happening. This definitely is the case for first time viewers who knew nothing about the film beforehand.
Actual newsreel footage of the utterly destroyed city and grisly coverage of the atom bomb survivors, accompanied by the anonymous female voiceover were quite odd and unprecedented in commercial cinema. Anyone experiencing Hiroshima, Mon Amour for the first time might feel that they were being subjected to a PBS documentary, rather than a love story of sorts set in post-World War Two Hiroshima, Japan. Another striking example of innovation in Hiroshima is how Resnais used flashback structure to tell the story of a married French actress making an anti-war film inHiroshima. She is engaged in a brief but intense affair with an also married Japanese architect in town on business.
Interestingly, according to aforementioned film critic Michael J. Smith what appear to be flashbacks is not really the case. He describes them rather, as being: “…in her consciousness time and space are poetically fused, one place co-existing with (and as) the other” while in one scene the actress (played by Emmanuelle Riva) walks through the streets of Hiroshima at night. She looks up at various buildings, street lights, neon signs, and so forth — and somehow all of these blend together with street scenes of her hometown in Nevers, France. As a clever director, Resnais made good use of slow tracking shots and presents a languid feel in this sequence to blend her past memories and present experiences together in a manner that had not been done in film before.
Part 3 of my original ASU paper on Hiroshima, Mon Amour will be posted next week. Then, on to Breathless! (which I’ve touched on in Part 1) will be up for further discussion.
