Is all of the historic footage at the beginning actual footage shot on site in Hiroshima. Some of it is so dramatic, for instance the vast hospital wards with 100s of badly burned people, it looked staged. In either case it was truly horrifying.
There are many negative comments about this film on this forum. For viewers considering whether it is worth the time, it most certainly is. The screenplay and the two actors are simply amazing.
It is 100% real, because Resnais originally made footage for a documentary on Hiroshima; which never was finallized, because Resnais retreated from the project when he realized that his footage would never add anything relevant to the +/- 15 documentaries on Hiroshima which had already been produced.
shareShe said something like "the films, the reconstruction, were faithful to the truth", so I had the impression that some of the crowd scenes - the ones that looked staged - actually were staged, and all the rest was real.
shareThe opening 15 minutes is a combination of newsreel footage, scenes from a Japanese propaganda film (recreating the devastation after the bomb was dropped) and original footage shot by Renais in '58. As the previous poster mentioned, the staged scenes are commented upon by the female protagonist as being "reconstructions" which ties into the artifice of the museum exhibits and, again, with the "peace" film the actress is shooting within the film.
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