Hiroshima mon amour concerns a series of conversations (or one enormous conversation) over a 36-hour long period between a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva), referred to as She, and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada), referred to as He. They have had a brief relationship, and are now separating. The two debate memory and forgetfulness as She prepares to depart, comparing failed relationships with the bombing of Hiroshima and the perspectives of people inside and outside the incidents. The early part of the film recounts, in the style of a documentary but narrated by the so far unidentified characters, the effects of the Hiroshima bomb on August 6, 1945, in particular the loss of hair and the complete anonymity of the remains of some victims. He had been conscripted into the Japanese army and his family was in Hiroshima on that day.
During 1964, in the months following World War III, the conflict has devastated the northern hemisphere, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout, killing all life there. Air currents are slowly carrying the fallout south; the only areas still habitable are in the far reaches of the southern hemisphere.
Following a routine nuclear experiment, the ship Ryujin Maru II disappeared while in the South Pacific . Days layer, another ship, bound for Izu, stumbles upon the craft adrift at sea. Six members of the crew decide to board the ship to see why there is no one on deck. To their surprise, they find no one on board at all, only piles of disheveled clothes. In the captain's room, they find an unfinished log, and begin to suspect that the crew must have been killed somehow. While leaving the captain's room, Dai, one of the crew members who boarded the ship, is killed by a mysterious blue liquid that climbs up his leg and melts his body, leaving only his clothes behind. After killing Dai, the liquid takes the shape of a man and is joined by another one from the window. The monsters rush at one of the terrified men and quickly claim another victim. Next, Sou is killed on the dock while trying to escape. Only two of the original six make it off the ship alive, and they spot Liquid People (H-Men) walking around the deck as they disembark away from the ship.
Une explosion nucléaire au milieu de l'Atlantique fait revenir à la vie un monstre marin préhistorique qui se met à attaquer des nageurs, des bateaux et des phares le long de la côte espagnole. Deux hommes, un Espagnol et un Américain, font alors équipe pour tenter de stopper le monstre avec l'aide d'un océanographe.
A lone man walks through the sweltering streets of a deserted London. The film then goes back several months. Peter Stenning (Judd) was an up-and-coming journalist with the Daily Express but a messy divorce has thrown his life into disarray. His Editor (Christiansen) has begun giving him lousy assignments. He begins drinking too much. (One of his lines is, "Alcoholics of the press, unite!") Stenning's only friend, Bill Maguire (McKern), is a veteran Fleet Street reporter who offers him encouragement and occasionally covers for him by writing his copy.
A man (Davos Hanich) is a prisoner in the aftermath of World War III in post-apocalyptic Paris where survivors live underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries. Scientists research time travel, hoping to send test subjects to different time periods "to call past and future to the rescue of the present". They have difficulty finding subjects who can mentally withstand the shock of time travel. The scientists eventually settle upon the prisoner; his key to the past is a vague but obsessive memory from his pre-war childhood of a woman (Hélène Chatelain) he had seen on the observation platform ("the jetty") at Orly Airport shortly before witnessing a startling incident there. He had not understood exactly what happened but knew he had seen a man die.
The film does not have a single narrative, but is rather episodic in nature, following the adventures of a "surrogate Kurosawa" (often recognizable by his wearing Kurosawa's trademark hat) through eight different segments, or "dreams", each one titled.
The prologue is set in Nazi Germany during the final days of World War II. A Kriegsmarine Officer, flanked by three Commandos, barges into the laboratory of a Dr. Riesendorf with orders to seize the immortal heart of the Frankenstein Monster, on which Riesendorf is busy experimenting. The heart is summarily transported by U-Boat to be passed off to their Japanese allies via the Atlantic. In the Indian Ocean, off the Maldives, the U-Boat meets up with a Japanese Imperial Navy submarine to make the exchange. They are sighted by an Allied Forces scout plane and bombed, but not before the Kriegsmarine pass the heart (contained in a locked chest) to the Japanese, who take it back to Hiroshima for further experimentation. But just as the experiments are about to begin, Hiroshima is bombed by the Allied Forces, and the heart and the experiments vanish in the atomic fireball.
In an icy North American region, an unknown aircraft is shot down by an American fighter jet. The aircraft crashes and its cargo, a low-level atomic bomb, explodes. The resulting cataclysm awakens a giant, prehistoric monster called "Gamera", who has the appearance of a giant turtle with large tusks. Japanese scientists on an expedition (including Dr. Hidaka, Kyoko, and Aoyagi) nearby are given a "devil stone" by an Eskimo chieftain, who explains that the creature is called Gamera.
As the film opens, a small boat is seen chugging through stormy seas. A giant octopus appears from the ocean and seems bent on killing the sole crew member on deck. Suddenly, the octopus releases the man and retracts its tentacles from the boat. Relieved, the sailor peers out the porthole to see Gaira, a large green man-like creature, fighting the octopus. After easily defeating it, Gaira turns his attention to the boat and sinks it.
The film opens to a shot of an abandoned office, where the main character (Pierre Jolivet), who is only identified as 'The Man' in the end credits, is having intercourse with a sex doll. The Man is then seen attempting to salvage parts from abandoned vehicles, but returns to his dwelling empty handed, where he works on building a makeshift aircraft. The Man ventures outside the office building he lives in, which is surrounded by a desert wasteland. A group of men are shown surviving in the wasteland. They hold a man, 'The Dwarf' (Maurice Lamy), captive, and force him to retrieve water for them. The Man, who has been observing the survivors, makes his way to their camp, stabs their leader, 'The Captain' (Fritz Wepper) and retrieves a car battery. Survivors pursue The Man, though he is able to escape in his now completed aircraft.
Le comte d'Artigas a mis sur pied une bande de pirates qui écume les épaves voire coule intentionnellement les navires marchands à l'aide d'un sous-marin ultramoderne, lui-même dérobé. Son ambition le pousse ensuite à enlever le professeur Roch et son assistant, Simon Hart, afin de les mettre à son service. Le professeur, tenu dans l'ignorance des projets maléfiques du comte, met au point un explosif très dangereux et révolutionnaire par sa puissance destructrice. Son assistant, lui, a décelé les projets du comte et est gardé prisonnier.
American scientist Steve Karnes (Gene Evans) delivers a speech to a British scientific society, headed by Professor James Bickford (André Morell), about the dangers to marine life posed by nuclear testing. Before Karnes can return to the U.S., a real-life example of his concern materializes when Tom Trevethan (Henri Vidon), an old fisherman, receives a lethal doze of radiation; his dying word is "behemoth". Later thousands of dead fish are washed ashore.
John Johnson se marie, mais ce jour mémorable l'est aussi pour d'autres raisons: la guerre éclate, l'église est bombardée et John est pris et condamné à mort pour sédition.