By Ray Schultz
I was afraid this would happen. A few weeks ago, I did an item about Time Inc sending a small strip of film from the movie Hiroshima Mon Amour in a mailing. A friend in the circ business asked for the actual letter.
I couldn’t find it at first–I wrote the original piece from memory–but I have since located a Xerox in a cardboard box. So here’s the original 1960 copy from Time. The envelope had a light green panel featuring many small Time logos, and a line saying, “Film Enclosed.” Handwriting on the envelope identifies the piece as “Hiroshima Mon Amour 1960.”
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Dear Reader:
These six frames of film are from the much-discussed French film, “Hiroshima, Mon Amour”, directed by Alain Resnais and described by TIME as “the acknowledged masterpiece of the New Wave of Gallic moviemakers.”
After you have held the strip up to the light and caught the spirit of this “intense original and ambitious piece of cinema”, you may or may not decide to see the film. (The locale shifts between France and Japan; the sub-titles are in English). We think you’d find it an interesting experience.
But the real reason for this letter is to tell you how to get more out of every new movie you see, every new book you read, every new place you visit, and just about every conversation you find yourself taking part in —
— by giving yourself the extra advantage of becoming a regular reader of TIME.
For people who read TIME can’t help but bring to every activity the background and insight they’ve gained from following the wonderfully varied story of the news and the people who make it.
In the case of this film, for example – you would start out several laps ahead – with a firm grasp of the new goals and the new techniques that imaginative movie directors are exploring now…with a sharp awareness of the current unrest in Japan, the spoken and unspoken attitudes that underlie the actions of the characters you watch. And the same point applies to almost every else you do. Just think about it…
Are you planning a trip? Going to the theater? Following the election campaign? Helping a youngster to choose the right school?
As a TIME reader, you’ll have bases for comparison…facts to bolster your private judgments…and easy familiarity with the whole broad subject, whether it’s music or books or business, science or sport or the arts.
Just because of what it is, TIME enhances, enriches and adds meaning to almost all your experience. It truly equips the Twentieth Century citizen to get more out of all the ways of life that are open to him in this infinitely complex world.
So if you are not now reading TIME as a subscriber with the continuity and flow that can only come from reading it every week, I hope you’d like to start now.
The enclosed card will bring you TIME for 27 weeks (a full six months) for only $1.97 – a saving of $1.66 under the regular subscription price and $4.78 under the newsstand price. If you will simply sign it and mail it, we will start your subscription promptly and bill you later, after your first copies arrive.
Cordially,
Rhett Austell
Circulation Manager
The TellAllmarketing Blog 