Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959/Umbrella Entertainment DVD/Region Four/4/PAL
Format)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C+ Film: B+
PLEASE NOTE: This DVD can only be operated on
machines capable of playing back DVDs that can handle Region Four/4/PAL format
software, and can be ordered from our friends at Umbrella Entertainment at the
website address provided at the end of the review.
From Alain Resnais, the most underrated of the French New
Wave directors comes the first of several brilliant classics that made him a force to be reckoned
with. In the case of Hiroshima Mon Amour, it helped launched
his career. The film is about the end of
World War II, the end of the world, the horrors of nuclear radiation, genocide,
fallout literal & figurative and a film on nuclear holocaust about the
impossibility of capturing a nuclear holocaust on film. The film would never survive, so the film is
about the ugly possibilities of nothingness.
However,
it is also a celebration of life, love and what people can do if their better
nature can triumph over enough of the darkness.
It is also a brutal look at doing damage we can never outdo and though
it focuses on the dropping of Fat Man & Little Boy on Japan, it never lays
blame on The United Stases or tries to revise history, just prevent this
particular history from ever repeating again.
Marguerite
Duras’ screenplay won the Academy Award and once the film beings, it never lets
up in what it has to say, show or consider.
Rich and involving, the film holds up remarkably well ands if anything,
is as relevant as it was when it first arrived nearly 50 years ago. Emmanuéle Riva and Eiji Okada play the lovers
recalling the events while rekindling their passion for each other in the most
physical terms, but it is as much intimacy as sexuality.
Hiroshima Mon Amour is a must-see for any serious
film fan or scholar and fortunately, it is out in another strong DVD release
like this one from Umbrella.
The 1.33
X 1 black & white image is from the same restored source that he U.S.
Criterion DVD is from and looks just as good, with its classic images by Sacha
Vierny and Takahashi Michio, with fine Video Black, plus good detail and depth
for a film this age in this format. The
Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is actually clearer than the Criterion’s Dolby 1.0 and
that helps the Giovanni Fusco/Georges Delerue score out the most. Extras include a trailer for three other
Umbrella DVD releases and the fine featurette A Brilliant Career: The Films Of Alain Resnais, which should be
seen after seeing this great film.
As noted
above, you can order this import exclusively from Umbrella at:
http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/
- Nicholas Sheffo
