This sad and strong movie, quite expressionist and reminding a documentary, was made just eigth years after USA atomic bombing of Hiroshima. It depicts the destruction of war in a so desperate and degrading way, with harsh images of tragedy and sounds of scream, that perhaps only Elem Klimov's Come and See overcane it in the history of cinema. Although pace is perhaps more sluggish than the ideal, Hideo Sekigawa has anyway an amazing sucess in using sound, working with broad spaces, and coordinating tens of thousands of extras, including many children, with remarkable and quite expressive performances of them. Hiroshima's hellscape with a multitude of dirty flabbergasted hobbling people on dispair and in tattered cloth surrounded by dead bodies reminded me not only of Come and See, but also of paintures such as Candido Portinari's Retirantes and Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa. The movie is able to cause deep emotions, by the combination of good soundtrack, striking cinenatography and very moving acring. It is one of the most important pacifist films ever made, not only for showing, without filters, the horror that is the reason for armed forces exist, but also for portraying their ridículous behavior and concerns.
Hiroshima
(1953)
One of the strongest war films ever, released just 8 years after Hiroshima bombing
16 January 2023