Directed by Alain Resnais • 1959 • France, Japan
Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada
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 (“Hiroshima My Love”) is a moody masterwork that delicately weaves past and present, personal pain and public anguish.
Up Next in French New Wave
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Les cousins
Directed by Claude Chabrol • 1959 • France
Starring Jean-Claude Brialy, Gérard BlainIn LES COUSINS (“The Cousins”), Claude Chabrol crafts a sly moral fable about a provincial boy who comes to live with his sophisticated bohemian cousin in Paris. Through these seeming opposites, Chabrol conjures...
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Breathless
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • France • 1960
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel BoulangerThere was before BREATHLESS, and there was after BREATHLESS. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspi...
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Shoot the Piano Player
Directed by François Truffaut • 1960 • France
Starring Charles Aznavour, Marie Dubois, Nicole BergerFrançois Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this, his most playful film. Part thriller, part comedy, part tragedy, SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER relates the adventures of mild-mannered ...
