“Integrating past and present, poetic images and documentary footage, music and Marguerite Duras’ dialogue, the film achieved a structural balance of such emotional and intellectual power that audiences were stunned.”
A French woman (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese man (Eiji Okada) have an affair while she is in Japan making a film about peace and the impact of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The man, an architect, lost his family in the bombing. She recalls her lover during the war, a 23 year-old German soldier who later died. Despite the time they spend together, her attachment appears minimal and they go forward into the future. Arty for sure, but formally also one of the most influential films of 1950s.
