Resnais’ feature debut, from a screenplay by Marguerite Duras, was “the most startling film to emerge from France since the war” (Peter Cowie). A French actress visiting Hiroshima has an affair with a Japanese architect, but the setting evokes painful memories of her first lover, a German soldier who was shot on Liberation Day. Addressing themes that were to become his preoccupations – memory and willed forgetfulness, the subjective nature of time, and the imminence of death – Resnais developed an editing style and narrative structure which was recognized for its ability to represent interior states. “Perhaps the most imperishable quality of Hiroshima mon amour is that, within all the staggering audacity and beauty of its composition, it remains a plaintive and very moving love story” (Cowie). “Hiroshima Mon Amour has been as important in the development of film art as Citizen Kane” (James Monaco).