I Loved The Taste Of Blood Since I Tasted Yours.

I derive joy from simple pleasures. Like knowing that what is often thought of as the pioneering film of the French New Wave, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, was nominated for an Oscar. Strange it wasn't nominated for Foreign Language film (though that may well have to do with the submissions procedure), but for Best Original Screenplay for Marguerite Duras. Of course it lost (to Billy Wilder's The Apartment, which took home Best Picture also), but it did get a BAFTA (the UN Award - what the?)

Alain Resnais' 1959 masterpiece was widely acclaimed, coming around the same time as François Truffaut's The 400 Blows and just before Jean-Luc Godard's seminal A bout de souffle. Resnais brought in the jump cut between memory and present, as well as keeping his story of love in another country very simple. He (credited on imdb.com as Luis but given no name in the film, played by Eiji Okada) is an architect in Hiroshima, who was on active duty when the bomb hit, but whose family all lived in the city at the time. She (similarly, her name is Elle, played by Emmanuelle Riva) is an actress in Hiroshima for 36 hours only. The two begin a passionate affair despite the fact that they are each otherwise married. But the film doesn't focus on the words these two speak of and too each other so much as what is said about the city. It is almost as though Resnais and Duras are attempting to heal the damage done fourteen years earlier, using love as the bandaid. And it is beautiful. As the film progresses it seems entirely plausible that their feelings could possibly undo all of the damage bestowed upon the city.


Of course it can't, and in the final scene, which heavily references Casablanca, it becomes apparent that all good things must come to an end. But, like Casablanca, the memories will last a lifetime - they may not have started a beautiful friendship, but they will forever hold in their hearts the few hours they spent in carnal embrace, discussing the world and their names as cities.


The Japanese sections in particular were beautifully captured by Michio Takahashi (the French segments captured as flashback and memory by She were shot by Sacha Vierny), and the whole film wove its way into my consciousness like not many can. Resnais' crafting of the structure, and the way it was all cut together by a team, gave it a freshness that still holds firm fifty years later. The realness that somehow permeates through the artifice of the medium is striking - I do think it strange that the jumpcutting in this film and in A bout de souffle in fact seem to be the realest ways to portray humanity, despite the almost Brechtian selfawareness they by nature have.


It is a beautiful example of how simple cinema can be whilst saying absolute volumes. There is a good reason why this film is held up somewhere near the pinnacle of film. This is a film I look forward to revisiting time and time again, as I'm sure that every time something new shall shine through. 5 stars.

Informers Inform, Burglars Burgle, Murderers Murder and Lovers Love.

Aah, Breathless (À bout de souffle.) You iconic piece of cinema, you. There is so much about Breathless that keeps me coming back for more, fifty years after the film released, close to a decade after I first saw it. As one of the defining films of the French New Wave, that period of cinematic awesomeness (yes, I just said 'awesomeness') that began in the late-50s and early 60s with films like Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Alain Resnais' Hiroshima, Mon Amour, both from 1959, Breathless helped to bring recognition and acclaim to the movement from around the world. What is it about the film? There are so many things. I once wrote a paper on it, in fact. I could go on for hours. But I won't. I'm going to break it down in simple terms.

Petty criminal Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is on the run from the cops after doing something a little more than petty - shooting a police officer. His American girlfriend Patricia (Jean Seberg) hides him, not knowing the extent of his crimes. The two romp around Paris for a while before Patricia gives him away. Resigned to his fate, Michel then decides to flee, bringing about the beautiful and tragic final protracted death scene.


That's the basic plot out of the way. Director Jean-Luc Godard helped to revolutionise film with the success of this film. Sure, he wasn't the first to use the idea of jump cuts (it's been years since I saw it, but didn't The 400 Blows also use them in the scene where Jean-Pierre Léaud is being interviewed by the principal or whatever it was also feature them? I might be wrong), but here they were so informative to the narrative, so strong in their purpose, so noticeable in how they were used.


Yes, Godard wasn't the first director to 'take it to the streets', as it were. In fact, this whole concept of taking it to the streets was one of the defining motivations behind the French New Wave. As a rebuttal to the stagnant studio system, the freedom of smaller cameras and running around shooting without lights with a handheld camera on the streets of Paris was pretty much the whole idea - freeing you up to work with very little money, anyone you wanted to work with, anywhere you wanted to do it, with the flexibility to adapt and change as you went along. A truly dynamic notion that works initially before ego and power gets in the way (a problem with virtually all New Wave movements, especially ones based on simplicity), within France this gave us the work of some truly incredible directors - lets add Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette to the few already mentioned.


As a film goes, the film is excellent regardless, entertaining, gripping, stylish but lo-fi relatable. Belmondo and Seberg pull off their roles with aplomb, and the few supports give their own little individual flair. It looks terrific, with cinematographer Raoul Coutard taking Godard's brief for a reportage style film seriously and giving the fictional tale a similar reality to that which held Close-Up thirty years later. 5 stars.