A bewitching bridge between literature and cinema

The actress Emmanuelle Riva for the dialogues, the author of the script Marguerite Duras for the comments: a reading of an incredible grace, recorded in 1966. Listening to the end of the night …

«TU has not seen anything in Hiroshima ”… The sentence, throbbing, stated by the slightly white and completely subjugating voice of Emmanuelle Riva, resonates forever in the memories of moviegoers. Hiroshima, mon amour, from which it is obviously extracted, was the first feature of Alain Resnais, released on the screens in 1959. He was going to mark the history of cinema, shaking up the classic codes of narration, questioning the strength of the memory and the capacity of the arts and the media to transcribe a event of such a dramatic magnitude – questioning which remains as relevant.

While we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 8), France Culture has just had the bright idea to exhume its archives a 1966 program, History without images, Produced by a certain Michel Polac and largely devoted to the film by Resnais. A two -part replay, offered as part of the Nuits de France Culture and available online.

We hear a long interview with the filmmaker but also, above all, his scenario interpreted by Emmanuelle Riva, with the didascalies read by Marguerite Duras, author of the text. The musicality of the verb of Duras, carried by an actress who succeeds in the challenge of proving to be as hypnotizing as it is evocative, makes this reading a highly poetic object. Where the images thus suggested are superimposed on our memories of the film, in a game of mirrors and endless perspective. Extending the primary questioning of Hiroshima, mon amour, And disturbing the magic of literature, radio and cinema in a disturbing way.