Alain Resnais DVD review - Hiroshima Mon Amour / Night and Fog
Out on DVD next week to coincide with a season of the director's distinctive brand of cinema at the BFI, the two pioneering films that made Alain Resnais' name in the 1950s and paved the way for the modernist French New Wave.
![Alain Resnais DVD Hiroshima Mon Amour Night And Fog]()
Hiroshima Mon Amour + Night And Fog
(Alain Resnais, 1959 + 1955)
What are memories made of? Alain Resnais tackles the 20th Century’s most appalling atrocities and concludes that, sadly for those present, you had to be there
A landmark in art-house cinema, Hiroshima Mon Amour pre-empted the freewheeling form, thematic fearlessness and heart-on-sleeve intellectualism of the French New Wave. But crucially, Alain Resnais neglected the Nouvelle Vague’s joie de vivre, giving this the semblance of a parody of everything you’ve ever hated about art-house cinema.
It’s certainly an ambitious film. A genuine French/Japanese co-production (check the credits, every job is handled by at least two people), freely mixing drama and documentary, Resnais’ multi-cultural romance deals with the affair between a French woman and a Japanese man in the spectre of one of the 20th Century’s most cataclysmic events. At heart, the film is asking us to never forget – just as the documentary-trained Resnais did for the Holocaust in this DVD’s companion-piece Night and Fog (more of which later). Yet the move into feature-length fiction, in an era where Bergman and Antonioni were asking difficult questions and refusing to find answers, provided Alain Resnais with a new remit. In Hiroshima Mon Amour, rather than tell us to forget, he prefers to wonder: forget what?
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Hiroshima Mon Amour + Night And Fog
(Alain Resnais, 1959 + 1955)
What are memories made of? Alain Resnais tackles the 20th Century’s most appalling atrocities and concludes that, sadly for those present, you had to be there
It’s certainly an ambitious film. A genuine French/Japanese co-production (check the credits, every job is handled by at least two people), freely mixing drama and documentary, Resnais’ multi-cultural romance deals with the affair between a French woman and a Japanese man in the spectre of one of the 20th Century’s most cataclysmic events. At heart, the film is asking us to never forget – just as the documentary-trained Resnais did for the Holocaust in this DVD’s companion-piece Night and Fog (more of which later). Yet the move into feature-length fiction, in an era where Bergman and Antonioni were asking difficult questions and refusing to find answers, provided Alain Resnais with a new remit. In Hiroshima Mon Amour, rather than tell us to forget, he prefers to wonder: forget what?
Read more »
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Alain Resnais Pictures
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