Alain Resnais

Hiroshima mon amour

Hiroshima mon amour

A cornerstone of the French New Wave, the first feature from Alain Resnais is one of the most influential films of all time. A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a brief, intense affair in postwar Hiroshima, their consuming mutual fascination impelling them to exorcise their own scarred memories of love and suffering. With an innovative flashback structure and an Academy Award–nominated screenplay by novelist Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima mon amour is a moody masterwork that delicately weaves past and present, personal pain and public anguish.

Film Info

  • France
  • 1959
  • 90 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.37:1
  • French
  • Spine #196

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Audio commentary by film historian Peter Cowie
  • Interviews with director Alain Resnais from 1961 and 1980
  • Interviews with actor Emmanuelle Riva from 1959 and 2003
  • New interview with film scholar François Thomas, author of L’atelier d’Alain Resnais
  • New interview with music scholar Tim Page about the film’s score
  • Revoir “Hiroshima” . . . , a 2013 program about the film’s restoration
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Kent Jones and excerpts from a 1959 Cahiers du cinéma roundtable discussion about the film

New cover by Sarah Habibi

Purchase Options

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Audio commentary by film historian Peter Cowie
  • Interviews with director Alain Resnais from 1961 and 1980
  • Interviews with actor Emmanuelle Riva from 1959 and 2003
  • New interview with film scholar François Thomas, author of L’atelier d’Alain Resnais
  • New interview with music scholar Tim Page about the film’s score
  • Revoir “Hiroshima” . . . , a 2013 program about the film’s restoration
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Kent Jones and excerpts from a 1959 Cahiers du cinéma roundtable discussion about the film

New cover by Sarah Habibi

Hiroshima mon amour
Cast
Emmanuelle Riva
Eiji Okada
Stella Dassas
Pierre Barbaud
Bernard Fresson
Credits
Director
Alain Resnais
Produced by
Anatole Dauman
Produced by
Samy Halfon
Produced by
Sacha Kamenka
Produced by
Takeo Shirakawa
Screenplay and dialogue
Marguerite Duras
Directors of photography
Sacha Vierny
Directors of photography
Michio Takahashi
Music
Georges Delerue
Music
Giovanni Fusco
Editors
Henri Colpi
Editors
Jasmine Chasney

Current

Hiroshima mon amour: Time Indefinite
Hiroshima mon amour: Time Indefinite
“I think that in a few years, in ten, in twenty, or thirty years, we shall know whether Hiroshima mon amour was the most important film since the war, the first modern film of sound cinema.” That was Eric Rohmer, in a July 1959 roundtable discuss…

By Kent Jones

Remembering Alain Resnais
Remembering Alain Resnais
A few years ago, as I was collaborating on the Criterion release of Last Year at Marienbad, I had the chance to meet Alain Resnais. We had released Hiroshima mon amour and Night and Fog a few years earlier, and the director had not been available to…

By Alexandre Mabilon

Rachel Kushner’s Top 10
Rachel Kushner’s Top 10

The author of The Mars Room and The Flamethrowers shares a selection of her favorite films, including masterworks by Altman, Sembène, and Pasolini.

Isabel Sandoval’s Top 10
Isabel Sandoval’s Top 10

The director of the acclaimed new film Lingua Franca chooses a selection of movies she loves, including ones that have inspired her to break the rules of genre and narrative.

Ali Abbasi’s Top 10
Ali Abbasi’s Top 10

It’s no surprise that the director of the wildly unpredictable Border, Sweden’s entry for the best foreign-language film Oscar, has a soft spot for renegades like Pasolini, Buñuel, and Lynch.

Mutations of Memory in Hiroshima mon amour
Mutations of Memory in Hiroshima mon amour

Professor David Bordwell breaks down the stunningly innovative thirteen-minute prologue of Alain Resnais’s debut feature in this excerpt from a program on the Criterion Channel.

A Tale of Two Hiroshimas

Deep Dives

A Tale of Two Hiroshimas

Two of the earliest films to depict the bombing of Hiroshima show how politics shapes national mourning.

By Kazu Watanabe