Rating: 
Summary: How can you be happy in Hiroshima?
Review: The action occurs in little more than twenty four hours ; a dream like prologue composed of brief shots of naked torsos intercut with shots of a hospital and museum , newreels of Hiroshima 's atomic devastation , footage from a 1953 documentary Japanese film Hiroshima (directed by Hideo Sekigawa ) , a reenactment of the holocaust , and views of the rebuilty city .
Both lovers are happily married . And they decide to trust one to another . But the memories of destruction and the unhappiness environment is a serious obstacle for them to think about the happiness in the middle of the hell and destruction .
Hiroshima mon amour shared with the Venezuelan film Araya the International Critics Award and received the Film Writers Award . It also shared with The four hundred blows (1959) a Prix Meliés. Universaly praised the film received the New York Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Film (1960) and Marguerite Duras was nominated for an Oscar for Story and Screenplay - written for the Screen in 1960.
The film 's central theme is the memory and forgetfulness ,a sinister leitmotif repeated in hypnotic mood . All experiences in time are subject to oblivion . She is an actress (rebuilding of the emotive memory) and he is an architect (rebuilding of new landscapes, the perfect motive for destroy and dream with a new future).
The characters are superb depicted , complex and changing . And one more detail : I have seen this film year after year , and the film , far from getting old , it renews itself , that is the best proof for stating we are in front one of the landmark film in the screen .
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful!
Review: The cinematography is fantastic. The stories of a Japanese man in Hiroshima and a French actress afraid to return to her native country are cleverly intertwined. Also, the concept of interior monologue is pioneered in this film, which has inspired numerous other filmmakers. Why four stars and not five? Plot-wise, the last twenty minutes drag on and on. There are also two technical aspects that make me deem this only four stars. In the video, the subtitles are white and very difficult to read in some points. The movie also differs quite a bit from Marguerite Duras's original screenplay, which has a fairly consistent pace and never really drags. If you like this movie, I highly recommend reading the screenplay - you'll probably enjoy it more than the movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Half Beautiful and Half Gruesome
Review: The film is like most reviewers say, beautiful. Riva is gorgeous, the cinematography is stunning and there is a lot of skin for this early in the '60s. But mixed with the beauty is a lot of horrible imagery. Shots of Hiroshima's devistation (real or otherwise) are numerous. There is also quite a bit of personal immorality present as the relationship between the two main characters is of two adulterers. See "Mon Oncle d'Amerique" for the Resnais masterwork.
Rating:
Summary: A Poetic Symphony of Language!
Review: This book is absolutely stunning. The screenplay for the Alain Resnais film of the same title, it also includes Duras' own specifications for the backgrounds of the characters and the actors who portray them. A wonderful way to grab ahold of the fleeting brilliance of the film for a longer period of reflection. There's no other way to read it but in its original French!
Rating:
Summary: Remembrance of things past
Review: This is a film about memory, like many of Resnais's films. For me, too, it was one of those milestones that changed the way I look at movies and perhaps altered my view of the world--back when I first saw it in the 1970s. Seeing it now, my admiration is maintained, even if the anti-war message seems a little heavy-handed today. Still, it was this film that prompted me to visit Hiroshima when I had the chance, an experience that oddly enough parallels the movie. Seeing bustling, rebuilt Hiroshima with the knowledge of what happened there--aided by the skeleton of the lone bombed-out building that remains--makes one ponder the "idea" of memory, the need to remember and the need to move on. Anyway... this remains an excellent movie and one long overdue for a major restoration and release on DVD!
Rating:
Summary: Victims of War
Review: This is an excellent film that depicts the pain and suffering of war on the large and individual scale. By contrasting the two, the film is able to make its' message that much more profound. The film takes palce in Hiroshima circa 1959 and begins as we hear the voices of two quieted lovers. The woman talks about what she has learned from witnessing the bombing of Hiroshima. The man constantly reminds her that she was not there. As the voices (in French) become faces, we see a French woman and a Japanese man. The woman is clearly very happy and full of life. Their relationship is about to end (it apparrently had barely begun). The man does not want to lose his new-found lover and persists over the next 24 hours to try and talk her into staying. At one point, the woman recalls the emotional tragedy that she suffered at the end of WWII in France. As she painstakingly recalls the events of 14 years ago, we watch her gradually disintegrate into a depressed shell of her earlier self. This is the tragic beauty of this movie and an effective way to show the horrors of war. Part of the problem of comprehending the devastation of war is often the immensity of it. As we are shown some graphic pictures and statistics of the A bomb's effect on Hiroshima, it sometimes gets hard to put it in human context. By "superimposing" the story of a woman's emotional tragedy and its' self destruction of her, we see the human effects. Her point at the beginning of the movie; that she know's what happened in Hiroshima, becomes understandable in this context. Ironically, the Japanese man, whose family perished in the bomb while he was serving elsewhere in the army, seems to be the one who was less affected by the war. This movie is one of those whose meaning grows on you. I bought the DVD and, while I'm no techical expert, am quite satisfied with its' quality. I initially thought the price tag to be pretty steep. After viewing it once, I have come to look on it as a bargain.
Rating:
Summary: Victims of War
Review: This is an excellent film that depicts the pain and suffering of war on the large and individual scale. By contrasting the two, the film is able to make its' message that much more profound. The film takes palce in Hiroshima circa 1959 and begins as we hear the voices of two quieted lovers. The woman talks about what she has learned from witnessing the bombing of Hiroshima. The man constantly reminds her that she was not there. As the voices (in French) become faces, we see a French woman and a Japanese man. The woman is clearly very happy and full of life. Their relationship is about to end (it apparrently had barely begun). The man does not want to lose his new-found lover and persists over the next 24 hours to try and talk her into staying. At one point, the woman recalls the emotional tragedy that she suffered at the end of WWII in France. As she painstakingly recalls the events of 14 years ago, we watch her gradually disintegrate into a depressed shell of her earlier self. This is the tragic beauty of this movie and an effective way to show the horrors of war. Part of the problem of comprehending the devastation of war is often the immensity of it. As we are shown some graphic pictures and statistics of the A bomb's effect on Hiroshima, it sometimes gets hard to put it in human context. By "superimposing" the story of a woman's emotional tragedy and its' self destruction of her, we see the human effects. Her point at the beginning of the movie; that she know's what happened in Hiroshima, becomes understandable in this context. Ironically, the Japanese man, whose family perished in the bomb while he was serving elsewhere in the army, seems to be the one who was less affected by the war. This movie is one of those whose meaning grows on you. I bought the DVD and, while I'm no techical expert, am quite satisfied with its' quality. I initially thought the price tag to be pretty steep. After viewing it once, I have come to look on it as a bargain.
Rating:
Summary: a beautiful film
Review: This is one of my favorite films of all time. Some find it frustrating, I know, but give it a chance. Alain Resnais' skill as a director is demonstrated in every moment of this dream-like film. The movie is a result of Resnais' collaboration with author Marguerite Duras (who wrote "India Song" and "The Lover").
Rating:
Summary: Buy it now
Review: This is one of the best movies I've ever seen. Instead of belittling it with my own description, I'm going to quote John Ward's commentary from the book "Alain Resnais or the theme of the time." "In Hiroshima two lovers are drawn together by their memories and at the same time are separated by them. They both have a need to remember and yet also a need to forget. "Resnais appears to make a distinction between public and private memories which corresponds closely to Bergson's motor mechanism/independent recollection classification. Great events in which we were not personally involved are almost inevitably forgotten. With the passage of time we become so insensitive to other people's suffering that we can lie in the disused ovens of Auschwitz and have our photographs taken as souvenirs. Yet a personal slight will remain in our minds, constantly affecting our attitudes to those we feel have insulted us... In an important sense, therefore, it is almost impossible for man to escape from his own egocentricity; and this is tragic, for it is vital that we do remember Auschwitz and that, in one way, we forget an insult. "Let us take the example of two tragedies: the destruction of Hiroshima and the brutality at Nevers. The girl has only Hiroshima as a public event. She has seen the city as a 'tourist', recording everything but 'understanding nothing'. She has seen the films, read the eye-witness accounts, thrilled with horror at the reconstructions in the museum, but she was not there when it happened... To the Japanese who has experienced it personally, she is an intruder into his tragedy. When she mentions that she has visited the museum, we see his impression of what the museum means to her. Flashing neon signs appear on the screen, honky tonk music on the soundtrack, as we hear her words and see the museum. To her it is nothing but a side-show, and no matter how hard she tries to 'feel' it will never be anything more. And he is equally distant from her experiences at Nevers. To him, at first, Nevers is 'a pretty French word' and he savours the beauty in her phrase 'jeune a Nevers.' "In the case of other people's tragedies, as we have seen, the difficulty is in remembering. Our knowledge is by description and not by acquaintance. But there is a way in which we can become virtually acquainted with such a tragedy even though it has ceased physically to exist. This is by experiencning the memory of it through its effect on someone we love. And it is this route to acquaintance that provides the problems in Hiroshima. Without it they would be two people eternally separated by their own memories; with it they are both drawn to and separated from each other. 'You are killing me, you make me feel wonderful' has more than a sexual connotation for the girl..." Etc, etc. Hiroshima Mon Amour is about time, forgetting, memories, isolation/union, etc. Besides the story, and script being amazing, it's also beautiful as a visual piece alone. Yay for Hiroshima Mon Amour.
Rating:
Summary: A classic from 1959
Review: This painful and deeply moving film retains its power with the passage of time. It's the story of a French woman and a Japanese man who become lovers in Hiroshima prior to the dropping of the bomb. The movie was an experiment in juggling past, present, and future at the time of its release - and it puzzled audiences then. Viewers are more sophisticated now, and I don't believe any audience today would be confused by the leaps Director Resnais takes with this film. One of the original movies that heralded the French New Wave, Hiroshima Mon Amour continues to enthrall with its tragic and soulful love story set amid a cataclysm.
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