At a press conference at the Venice Film Festival in 1963, Resnais said that his film depicted "the malaise of a so-called happy society...A new world is taking shape, my characters are afraid of it, and they don't know how to face up to it."[REF]
At the centre of the film lies the specific theme of the Algerian war, which had only recently been brought to its troubled conclusion, and which it had hitherto been almost impossible for French film-makers to address in a meaningful way.