Even with extreme caution, Resnais's first feature can be called one of the most influential movies ever made. It had critics grasping for Proust or Bergson, and filmmakers grasping for the scissors, much more often, in the cutting room. And yet Resnais has afterwards managed to top this achievement with regularity. The grandiosity of design, of subjects touched, of effects attempted, of styles mingled (the lyrical, the surreal, the documentary, the newsreel), permits frequent leaks of dreadful stuff, particularly in the past-time sections. And Pauline Kael has mercilessly exposed its gauche tuggings on liberals' heart-strings or puppet-strings. It is a forbidding task to attempt to cover the basic narrative situation in one sentence, but it has to do with a French actress reliving, out loud, her memories of a traumatic affair with a German soldier during the Nazi occupation, and meanwhile, in present time, going through a peculiarly parallel affair with a Japanese architect in the rebuilt city of Hiroshima. As film scripts go, Marguerite Duras's is a major work, with continual poetical sweets and delicacies; and as film performances go, Emmanuelle Riva's is also a major work. — Duncan Shepherd
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