There are a few sources that I've read on the Internet that herald Hiroshima Mon Amour as the first film of the French New Wave movement of the late 1950s, early 60s. This raises a few interesting points and, if truth be told, I wasn't getting that vibe that so many others seem to be so sure of in regards to the film in question being of the French New Wave variety. I think the sense of that low budget feel is there but this is essentially a romance film, a genre picture if you like. It is a film looking at two people in a relationship but, crucially, taking the time to acknowledge the world around them and how certain events brought them to have this relationship in the first place. It is additionally interesting to note that while it has been known for the French New Wave to take a surrealist look at the youth of the day, Hiroshima Mon Amour likes awfully the notion of looking back into decades gone by at what was and how that contributes to today's world.
That isn't to say Hiroshima Mon Amour is a bad film, it's just Bob le flambeur, for me, is the beginnings of said movement. Hiroshima Mon Amour is more a study of events and people by the people that we study in this film. It is a reconciliation of times gone by and a statement that these things will, hopefully, refrain from happening again. It begins with two people making love or engaging in the act of reproduction as images of the horrific results of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb blast are inter-cut in a sort of odd, juxtaposed series of images displaying acts that introduce life into the world and the results of certain other acts that propel massive amounts of death.
The two in question are Elle (Riva), French for 'She' or 'Her', who's an actress in Hiroshima and Lui (Okada), a Japanese architect who's actually from Hiroshima. A lot of the film is musings by these two people; on life, the global situation, their relationship and their pasts. The film is very concentrated in its study of these two people in this particular city, having this particular relationship and whatever politics it wants to get across it introduces with Elle wanting to quite clearly recognise the Hiroshima disaster and Lui initially just discarding it, something quite surprising for someone Japanese to do; then again, maybe he was just more interested in her than his opinion of his semi-destroyed town given the timing of when the conversation was raised.
What is born out of this opening, which continues combines documentary style footage inter-cut with said people, is a further scene that really points out its political stance and that's a demonstration about the weapon of mass destruction. So you, as do we all when watching, get the picture that the H-bomb was wrong in this filmmaker's opinion which is fine – that's done, what's next? Fortunatley, the film does open up further and didn't become what I was fearing: a dreary and fictionalised account that slips in and out of the documentary thus demanding some sort of artistic labelling just because it 'looks' like an avant-garde piece.
The conversation that I think saves the piece occurs between the two leads as they talk of past activity. Lui points out that he's from Hiroshima and, had he not been fighting in the Japanese army during the war, he surely would've been killed by 'the bomb' had he still been at home. Additionally, had the bomb never have fallen, Elle would not be there working as an actress and consequently, she would never had met Lui. It's a brief but quite an unnervingly optimistic turnaround given all the 'anti' politics the film had given us prior to this. It's a look at hope; something positive born out of something the author clearly stated previously he thought was negative.
But this is it, and I say that with as much positivity as possible. It is a lot of fancy switching from real life footage to two people rolling around in bed. It is a film that wants to say more about the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima than anything else, despite desperately trying to force its way into a genre towards the end when Elle reveals a 'past tragedy' in the sense she loved a German soldier in France during the occupation and suffered at the hands of others when word got out and the war ended. All of that feels included for sake of a runtime, something I didn't expect I'd be coming away from "the film that started the French New Wave" thinking. But the film is solid overall; it has that uncanny feel to it – that feel and that clear sense of inspiration. It is most things from 1942's Casablanca to 1995's Before Sunrise, meshed into one and with a political agenda. It is a tragedy at the end of the day and rather impressively, I think we feel for those who lost their lives in Hiroshima that day in August 1945, as well as for the two leads themselves when certain revelations become apparent right near the end – which in itself is a pretty impressive achievement.
That isn't to say Hiroshima Mon Amour is a bad film, it's just Bob le flambeur, for me, is the beginnings of said movement. Hiroshima Mon Amour is more a study of events and people by the people that we study in this film. It is a reconciliation of times gone by and a statement that these things will, hopefully, refrain from happening again. It begins with two people making love or engaging in the act of reproduction as images of the horrific results of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb blast are inter-cut in a sort of odd, juxtaposed series of images displaying acts that introduce life into the world and the results of certain other acts that propel massive amounts of death.
The two in question are Elle (Riva), French for 'She' or 'Her', who's an actress in Hiroshima and Lui (Okada), a Japanese architect who's actually from Hiroshima. A lot of the film is musings by these two people; on life, the global situation, their relationship and their pasts. The film is very concentrated in its study of these two people in this particular city, having this particular relationship and whatever politics it wants to get across it introduces with Elle wanting to quite clearly recognise the Hiroshima disaster and Lui initially just discarding it, something quite surprising for someone Japanese to do; then again, maybe he was just more interested in her than his opinion of his semi-destroyed town given the timing of when the conversation was raised.
What is born out of this opening, which continues combines documentary style footage inter-cut with said people, is a further scene that really points out its political stance and that's a demonstration about the weapon of mass destruction. So you, as do we all when watching, get the picture that the H-bomb was wrong in this filmmaker's opinion which is fine – that's done, what's next? Fortunatley, the film does open up further and didn't become what I was fearing: a dreary and fictionalised account that slips in and out of the documentary thus demanding some sort of artistic labelling just because it 'looks' like an avant-garde piece.
The conversation that I think saves the piece occurs between the two leads as they talk of past activity. Lui points out that he's from Hiroshima and, had he not been fighting in the Japanese army during the war, he surely would've been killed by 'the bomb' had he still been at home. Additionally, had the bomb never have fallen, Elle would not be there working as an actress and consequently, she would never had met Lui. It's a brief but quite an unnervingly optimistic turnaround given all the 'anti' politics the film had given us prior to this. It's a look at hope; something positive born out of something the author clearly stated previously he thought was negative.
But this is it, and I say that with as much positivity as possible. It is a lot of fancy switching from real life footage to two people rolling around in bed. It is a film that wants to say more about the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima than anything else, despite desperately trying to force its way into a genre towards the end when Elle reveals a 'past tragedy' in the sense she loved a German soldier in France during the occupation and suffered at the hands of others when word got out and the war ended. All of that feels included for sake of a runtime, something I didn't expect I'd be coming away from "the film that started the French New Wave" thinking. But the film is solid overall; it has that uncanny feel to it – that feel and that clear sense of inspiration. It is most things from 1942's Casablanca to 1995's Before Sunrise, meshed into one and with a political agenda. It is a tragedy at the end of the day and rather impressively, I think we feel for those who lost their lives in Hiroshima that day in August 1945, as well as for the two leads themselves when certain revelations become apparent right near the end – which in itself is a pretty impressive achievement.