Hiroshima mon amour (1959)

Hiroshima mon amour (1959), directed by Alain Resnais.

French actress and Japanese architect share a couple days of love. Mostly this is boy meets girl, their passion and struggles. A deeper layer concerns her memories of a tragedy during the war, also a matter of love.

An early segment contains horrific footage of A-bomb casualties, and there is an amount of peace-march hectoring. Made fourteen years after the bomb, we see much of the city rebuilt.

Some beautiful photography, sometimes a bit too consciously arty. Perhaps it seemed less so at the time. Parts remind me of Wings of Desire (1987), especially the elegiac music. The dialogue occasionally wanders off into French-film-speak.

Criterion DVD.

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