Alain Resnais is another recognizable name from the French New Wave, although not one that carries the attention of François Truffaut or Jean-Luc Godard. If there was one film that always stood out for myself as his best feature, it would be none other than his debut narrative Hiroshima Mon Amour. Never have I seen a film that blends the effects of trauma within a romance story that could have been easily been made to feel so ordinary, but subverts the possibilities it could have carried in order to become much more. Resnais had a style that was unlike many other filmmakers of the French New Wave, for rather than moving along with the quick pacing defining a filmmaker like Jean-Luc Godard, Resnais always played upon a more contemplative state.

The film opens with an image of what appears to be a couple caressing one another amidst ashes, but soon it cuts to images of Hiroshima with a voiceover repeating, “You saw nothing in Hiroshima.” As we look at these images, it hints only at a change in climate, one in a sense that as time goes by we only want to suppress memories that we do not want to keep, although they remain a permanent part of our own character. It comes from the repetition, “You saw nothing in Hiroshima,” where we have an already traumatized perspective haunted by a tragedy that shook his own life a different direction.