Hirsoshima Mon'Amour

Oy vay! On a recommendation I started watching this film in the library this afternoon before class. I nearly cried. Swear to god. I didn't even get to finish the film, because I needed to get to class, but watched about an hour of it. The only other Alain Resnais film I've seen is Providence, which I thought was amazing. This guy has quickly escalated into my top tier of filmmakers - over any other French New Wave filmmaker. This film felt to me like a documentary, footage of Hiroshima and Japanese movie depictions of Hiroshima are cut into this love story between a Japanese man and a French actress. Brilliant stuff, a moment when the Japanese man nearly jumps for joy when she shares a story of her first love with him and reveals that she hasn't told the story to anyone else in the whole world. Something about that moment is so touching. But the horror of the Hiroshima images and the description of the two characters, particularly the French women in describing her reaction to Hiroshima - at first she couldn't believe they could have done it, then she was glad the war was over, then she felt indifferent, then she felt guilty about the indifference. WOW!

I need to watch the whole thing. I was reading the Critereon Collection DVD story about the movie and it said it was Alain Resnais first film. Then I check out his IMDB list and he's done 20 plus films before it. Well, some of them are shorts, apparently, but still...his first feature. Give me a break.

All it takes is one brilliant film and a career is made....