ABSTRACT
In 1957, following the international success of Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog, 1955), a fact-driven journey into the Nazi concentration camps, Director Alain Resnais was approached to make a documentary surveying Hiroshima twelve years after the atomic bombing. He agreed to take on the project and set off for the atomic city. After months spent filming on location, however, Resnais decided to abandon a documentary genre, opting instead for a fictional film which would devote its first fifteen minutes to footage from his aborted documentary. Acclaimed French writer Marguerite Duras was approached to write the revised dramatic screenplay and the film became a joint French-Japanese venture. Resnais’ decision, motivated in large part by what he understood to be the limitations and inappropriateness of realist cinema in relation to the atomic bombings, has had a long-lasting impact.
