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L'Atalante (1934)

Director: Jean Vigo

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From Time Out London

Originally released in 1934, Jean Vigo’s first and only full-length feature is one of the cinema’s greatest masterpieces. The story is very simple: newly-weds Jean Dasté and Dita Parlo find living on a cramped Seine barge brings tension to their relationship; their naivety falls prey to the volatile eccentricity of bosum Père Jules, the temptations of a flirtatious pedlar, and their own unreadiness to compromise. But to this stark narrative Vigo brings a rich array of moods (comic, suspenseful, heart-rendingly romantic) to explore the nuances of every single emotion.
Made on a tiny budget, the film exudes an invigorating rawness, but the lyricism of Boris Kaufman’s camerawork, the childlike wonder of the performances and the moments of genuine surrealism situate it, poetically, between objective realism and subjective fantasy. The great Michel Simon’s bestial Jules brings magic and bizarre comedy into the brew as he dithers between jealousy and a desire that his life on the boat should continue uninterrupted, while Dasté and Parlo reveal an achingly vulnerable intensity in their chastely erotic scenes together. The direction, acting, script, music (by Maurice Jaubert) and photography – which includes startlingly beautiful special effects – merge to create the loveliest, least maudlin study of human desire ever committed to film; in less than 90 minutes it covers more ground than most directors’ entire filmographies.

Author: GA 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out London Issue 1810: April 27-May 04 2005