Hiroshima, my love

The story of seemingly short love in post-war Hiroshima, the French film actress ( Riva ) and the Japanese architect ( Okada ). The burden of the past, which you have to live with every hour, weighs on each of them.

The unbreakable connection of the past and the present, free transitions from the imaginary to the real, voice polyphony , musical structure of the plot, poetic associative moves - the film became a loud word in the field of innovative film language ( editing by Henri Colpie ) and gave reason to rank Alain Rene as the so-called “ new wave ".

It was supposed that the screenplay for the film would be written by Francoise Sagan , Duras set to work after the failure of a fashion writer.

Alain Rene claimed that his film was built on a clear algorithm : “I set out Marguerite for the algebraic concept of the work. If you show “Hiroshima” using a diagram , you will find a quartet form close to the musical score : themes, variations on the initial theme, repetitions, returns that may seem unbearable for those who do not accept the rules of the game in this film. The diagram would show that the film was designed as a triangle , in the shape of a funnel ” ^[1] .

René objected to the pessimistic interpretation of his film: “Hiroshima does not lead to the feeling of impossibility of life ... The fact that Hiroshima shows suffering people does not mean that it is a pessimistic film. Life is not always joyful, but at least 48 hours spent by my heroes cost ten years of visible happiness, which in reality is only lethargy . The worst thing is non-existence, empty life is worse than suffering ” ^[2] .

At the time of filming, the Japanese actor Eiji Okada did not know French , and therefore was forced to memorize his remarks by ear.

Viktor Bozovic resolutely defied reproaches that the director had compared the incommensurable: the tragedy of the girl from little Never called the “German litter” and the death of hundreds of thousands; the critic and art historian saw this as the main humanistic merit of A. Rene, “Conscience is indivisible. And humanity only then will be at the level of the requirements of humanism, when the death of one innocent will be perceived as a tragedy equal to Hiroshima. Then and only then will new Hiroshima become impossible ” ^[2] .

“... Love became suffering. The motive of love and the motive of suffering arise in the film simultaneously from the very first episode. The shots of love hugs alternate with documentary shots telling about the tragedy of Hiroshima, while in the offscreen dialogue the themes of love and atomic catastrophe also merge. The heroine speaks of her love, but at this time we see the surgeon’s forceps extract the eyeball from a person disfigured by an atomic explosion. This frame brings to mind the beginning of the " Andalusian dog " by Louis Bunuel - a razor that cuts through the human eye. (...) Anyone who truly survived, felt the tragedy of Hiroshima (and this was just another link in the chain of crimes of the 20th century), can never look at the world with its former eyes. This is exactly what happens with the heroine Alain Rene - his lyrical heroine. ... She [...] "saw everything in Hiroshima," managed to feel and understand the full horror of what happened, because she had her own Hiroshima in her life, whose name is Nevers. There, in a small provincial town, a sixteen-year-old girl met her first „German love“, which was cut short by death, where she faced injustice and violence, knew suffering, despair, hatred. It was a very small "personal" Hiroshima, in one millionth part of the present, - quite enough to disfigure one human life. (...)

In Hiroshima, love reunites time that has broken up. She is stronger than the painful memories and fear of the future. Thus, a person gains power over his destiny. This delicate balance is under threat all the time: time continuously “erodes” reality, undermines the connection between two beings. “I will forget you, I am already beginning to forget you,” exclaims the heroine, referring to her beloved. But no matter how fragile the mutual understanding of two people was, it turned out to be possible ” ^[2] .

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Forty years after the film was released, Russian film critic Mikhail Trofimenkov expressed his understanding in an expressive annotation :

“The bodies burned with love afterwards alternate on the screen with corpses burned by the bomb. Making love - the lot of the lucky survivors, but also love - the taste of ash and blood. “You didn’t see anything in Hiroshima,” say the lovers in bed in the film Rene, an archaeologist of memory, an archivist of suffering. Curled orgasm fingers unclenched, releasing the past. How to remove the unthinkable, so as not to fall into pornography of death, not to go crazy? The film is fragmented, like human memory itself, willing and not able to forget. It is torn apart, as torn by the story of the fate of lovers and the bodies of bystanders. The shadow of a man on the plates of Hiroshima, the crouched corpse of a German boy soldier, who was killed in an ambush on a date. The scars on the bodies of the Japanese, scars on the soul of a Frenchwoman, shaved bald "whores". Only after experiencing it all over again and together, unnamed heroes acquire names. At the same time they cease to be human. “Hi-ro-si-ma, this is your name,” she says. “This is my name,” he agrees. - And your name is Nevers "" ^[3] .

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• Prize of the International Federation of Film Press (equally with the tape " Four hundred blows ")
• Oscar 1961

  Nominations

  • Best original screenplay

• British Academy (BAFTA) , 1961

  Winner

  • United Nations Award

  Nominations

  • Best movie
  • Best Foreign Actress ( Emmanuel Riva )

• Cannes Film Festival , 1959

  Nominations

  • “ Golden Palm ” (the film was excluded from the official selection at the request of the American government, since atomic bombs were a forbidden topic)

“Hiroshima mon amour” is the performing masterpiece of the early Anna Herman ( 1966 ) ^[4] . Initially, the composition of Zbigniew Tsehana to poems Maciej Zenon Bordovich (“Miłość do drzewa sprzyja tylko ptakom ...”) was composed for “Polish Ima Sumac ” - Violetta Villas ^[5] .

In 2010, the fragrance “Hiroshima mon Amour”, named after the film, was released by the perfume house “Nez a Nez” ^[6] .

• Moscow, my love

• Ekranka.ru: Hiroshima, my love