Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959 Alain Resnais)

I should have seen it by now, really. Of course I can clearly see where Marienbad came from - it's in the opening horrific montage where she says she remembers and he says she does not. That weird first shot: the bodies seem covered in sand (it's ash), then water. The editing that then was so different (though the Cahiers crowd link it to Eisenstein); the many shots of her running to meet her lover; the current lover jump cut to the dead German; a low shot of a house for no reason (yet). Tracking shots through Hiroshima: fascinating to see it then at all. That strange feeling of a city very late at night. The light reflecting off the water (Sacha Vierny). The modernity (they are both married). Memory, forgetting. Forgetting love, forgetting Hiroshima. The first days of love. I think I was expecting something explosive. It is a very big film.

To Rohmer, Resnais is a 'cubist'. Interesting, as Guernica is one of his early shorts.