Hiroshima Mon amour -- Marguerite Duras

Author: (French) Marguerite Duras (DUras, M.) Author, Tan Translator
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-07-01
Features: If one must choose a film as a landmark marking the transition of Western cinema from the classical period to the modern era, then undoubtedly it is Hiroshima Mon Amour. With its modern-themed subject matter, ambiguous and multi-layered themes, shocking techniques of expression, and close connection to the Nouveau Roman movement, Hiroshima Mon Amour inspired and pioneered modern cinema in multiple senses. In May 1959, Alain Resnais brought his newly completed film Hiroshima Mon Amour to the 12th Cannes Film Festival in France, and the film immediately caused a sensation in the Western film world. Some called it a "truly great work," the "end of classicism," or "ten years ahead of its time, leaving all critics speechless." Hiroshima Mon Amour tells the story of a French actress filming in Japan and her love affair with a Japanese architect, interwoven with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the tragic love story of the actress as a teenager in a small French town, Nivelles, with a German soldier during World War II. People say Hiroshima Mon Amour is a turning point in cinema, as it was the first time bold and innovative narrative techniques were introduced. The film took back the ground long dominated by literature, incorporating surrealism and stream of consciousness, breaking away from traditional realism that relied on an all-knowing narrator. Soliloquies of one or more characters replaced the narrator. The world was no longer depicted but reflected in people's minds, forcing the audience to experience the film in a new way. In the late 1950s, a group of French new directors launched a movement against traditional filmmaking, known as the "New Wave." Young directors led by Godard, who despised all traditional cinematic storytelling methods, produced films with clear modernist characteristics. The concurrent emergence of the "Left Bank Group" is often considered a branch of the "New Wave." Alain Resnais was a representative of this group, whose films focused on exploring human consciousness and heavily used "stream of consciousness" techniques with a strong sense of temporal and spatial distortion. The Left Bank Group had a very close connection to literature. Many of the prominent writers of the "Nouveau Roman" movement were members of the "Left Bank Group," including its representative, Marguerite Duras. The "Nouveau Roman" writers brought a strong literary style to the "Left Bank Group" films, earning them the nickname "Author Films." The term "Author Films" has a dual meaning in a broader sense. On one hand, it means that the director of the film is also its creator, and the film must have a strong personal style. On the other hand, it means that the screenplay is an original work for the film, rather than an adaptation of a classic, with most of the screenplays being original creations by writers for the film, drawing heavily on literary techniques. Hiroshima Mon Amour, written by Marguerite Duras and directed by Alain Resnais, undoubtedly became a masterpiece of the Left Bank Group's author cinema. The interweaving of love and anti-war, anti-militarism themes in Hiroshima Mon Amour owes much to Marguerite Duras's original screenplay. However, looking at Alain Resnais's creative career, contemporary historical events (World War II and post-war events) and the impact of war on human destiny have always been his central themes. Created in 1950, Guernica, inspired by Picasso's painting, strongly protested the brutal bombing of the famous Spanish city by German fascists in 1937. In 1955, Alain Resnais shot Night and Fog, re-editing black-and-white photographs from archives and newsreels to recreate the horrific scenes of the Nazi concentration camps. And Hiroshima Mon Amour is the logical continuation and culmination of both these works.