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Alain Resnais - Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)

Together with Truffaut’s 400 Blows, this is one of the founding masterpieces of Nouvelle Vague cinema. Resnais, not as well known as Truffaut or Godard or even Varda is one of the best directors of the whole movement, particularly of what was called the Rive Gauche movement, a kind of more experimental film in the Nouvelle Vague context.

This is truly a masterpiece, it’s revolutionary in so many different ways, politically, socially, visually and in terms of storytelling. It tells the story of a one night stand by a mixed race couple, a French actress and a Japanese architect, who are also adulterers… the film opens with them naked in bed talking about Hiroshima where the film is set. Remember, this is 1959, this is revolutionary. Also the way their dialogue is illustrated with documentary footage of the aftermath of the atomic bomb bringing to mind Resnais short documentary Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) with it’s stomach wrenching visuals.

As the film goes on you understand that it isn’t only the Japanese man who suffers from trauma, but the actress too, having been in love with a German officer during the war and shunned as a tramp by her village going mad. In the end the film is about trauma, both at a large scale (Hiroshima) and a personal scale (Nevers) and how it makes you who you are. But it doesn’t despair, life moves on, Hiroshima was rebuilt, the actress left her village for Paris, still neither he can leave Hiroshima or her Nevers. A beautifully shot, contemplative, powerful and breathtakingly intelligent film, unmissable. (5/5)

Nancy Cunard  by Curtis Moffat, 1926.

Nancy Clara Cunard (10 March 1896 – 17 March 1965) was a writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class and devoted much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. She became a muse to some of the 20th century’s most distinguished writers and artists, including Wyndham Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Tristan Tzara, Ezra Pound and Louis Aragon, who were among her lovers, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Constantin Brâncuși, Langston Hughes, Man Ray, and William Carlos Williams.

Accessory Set

1880-1899