À propos de Nice

Other reviewers have already commented on Vigo's subversive deconstruction of the various narrative requirements and visual iconography of the travelogue format for the purposes of cutting satire, to the point at which we almost forget to view the film on such a level; instead taking it entirely at face value. A Propos de Nice (1930) is a short work, though only twenty minutes shorter than Zéro de conduit (1933), which is an obvious minor masterpiece. Whereas that particular film - as well as the director's final feature, the even greater L'Atlante (1934) - presented captivating images and fragmented ideas backed by traces of character and narrative, the film in question is a purely visual experience. To understand the film we must read deeply into the subtle juxtaposition of the images as they are presented to us, in order to greater appreciate the ideas that Vigo is trying to convey.

As with his second short film, Taris, roi de l'eau (1931), which looked at the daily routine of a synchronised swimmer, A Propos de Nice takes a conventionally bland presentational format and style and transforms it into a pure cinematic event. It is still, in all respects, a small-scale work; one that may confound and disappoint audiences looking for more of the magical realism and pretty evocation of youth and beauty presented by both Zéro de conduit and L'Atlante, though it is worth experiencing purely for Vigo's radical presentation and satirical evaluation of class and the bourgeoisie.

Well, this is great if you're looking for revolutionary film, not by our disillusioned standards, but from a time when it was thought it could change the world. It failed that but it changed the way we see and dream.

So, I've been following threads of that revolution, the revolutionary eye that does not merely see, the way audiences 'saw' live theater, but floats into space it constructs. One such I have found in Russia and followed the Ermoliev trail. I cover aspects of that in my posts about Ivan Mozzhukhin.

Another thread is Epstein and later Kirsanoff, both radical makers, both émigrés from the edges of a gone Empire. Also covered here.

Another intersects right here, it's a great find if you're attuned to the great experiments of the silent era. It will astonish you by sheer inventiveness, I guarantee. It can travel you.

We know it now because it's one of few utterances in film of a man who would have been another Fellini, the legend goes. He was a natural poet but lacked images, or a way to capture them, a way to realize vision. So he teamed up with a young Russian behind the camera then studying in Sorbonne, no ordinary émigré this one.

Now this young Russian guy had two brothers back home, fervent revolutionaries and were dabbling in cinema themselves. They were doing some pretty cool, pretty radical things between them. One account says how young Boris - the name of our guy - was kept up-to-date of revolutionary advances of his brothers via mail. Another account reveals that elder brother Denis had been in Paris in 1929, the year he made his seminal work. The two brothers would have got in touch, perhaps that film was screened, perhaps it astonished young Boris.

His brothers were geniuses. You will know Denis Kaufman by the alias Dziga Vertov. Mikhail was his right-hand man and a director himself - look out for Moscow from '27.

And let's not forget, Jean Epstein was giving lectures at Sorbonne. At any rate, Boris could not have been oblivious to the young medium being reshaped around the world, going beyond theatre. He could not fail to recognize that Jean Vigo wanted to work in this field.

So anyway, you may know that Vigo was a young poet born into anarchists. You may appreciate that anarchism then was not what it is now. You may even remember that anarchists were in Lenin's first provisional government, an astonishing thing for contemporary times (but quickly removed to consolidate power). So when Vigo sets out to film what was called a 'city symphony' at those times, Nice was not randomly selected. This is where complacent class enemies lounge half-asleep in the sun, oblivious to the sardonic camera. This is where tourists saunter in the promenade, healthy, satisfied, whole. Where sex beckons.

And on the other side of the city, the poor quarters, the workers, the impotentwatchers.

So in agitprop terms the Soviets favored, this has bite and gleeful irony to spare. We are shown miniature palm trees and a miniature train contrasted with the real things.

But it would be nothing, nothing at all, without the camera seeing the way it does.

Vertov's theory, rooted in Marxist dialectics, was of a 'cine-truth' that is possible as man goes beyond thought, beyond meddlesome conventional thought about things, and shifts gears into precise only-seeing that is, in itself, present action. You should know that this is a key insight in Buddhism, well preserved in teachings about mindful meditation.

So seeing clearly and without dramatic aftereffects. We get a camera that floats, has an airy quality, regular readers will know I've been following patterns in this type. The 'cine-truth', as it were, is not to be found in the political direction of the gaze, this is only another layer of meddlesome thought that gets in the way, but in the very fact that we are seeing people as they lounged, as they played tennis, waves as they washed the shore clean.

Forget this is an anarchist's poem. Let the Buddhist floating world wash over you. Let this just be about planets in their orbits.

"A Propos de Nice" is a very fascinating work by the great, avant garde filmmaker Jean Vigo (who sadly died at the young age of 29, with an only four film long career). It's done with tons of style and creativity, and is quite reminiscent of the work of Dziga Vertov (most famous for directing the classic film "Man with a Movie Camera")), so, if you enjoyed any of Vertov's films, you may find this short to be quite interesting.

Unlike your average Vertov film, "A Propos de nice" is surprisingly funny and satirical. If there's one thing we've learned from Vigo's small body of work is that he had a great sense of humor, and it's clearly evident in this film as well as both "Zero for Conduct" and "L'Atalante", and it's pretty impressive that Jean Vigo was able to make such a sharp satire without any dialogue or plot.

But, satirical elements aside, it is a truly fun and wonderful visual experience. So, even if you have no interest into looking into the film's hidden satirical meaning, it's still a very well shot and interesting avant garde work.

Influenced by the montage experiments of Dziga Vertov, this 'document' has been fashioned by Jean Vigo and his cameraman Boris Kauffman who just happened to be Vertov's brother. Although this could be seen as Vigo's contribution to the 'city-symphony' genre, beneath its surface lyricism lies a distinctly mordant polemic on social inequality.

Being a Marxist and the son of an executed Spanish anarchist, Vigo has a definite point of view and disguises neither his contempt for the 'haves' nor his sympathy for the 'have-nots'.

Some sequences were considered in 'bad taste' at the time not least the series of dissolves that strips a fashionably dressed young woman down to her birthday suit. This was, unsurprisingly, excised by the puritanical British censor but has happily been restored!

This short but telling piece is one of striking contrasts and Vigo's fragile state of health must surely have coloured his depiction of the Carnival as a prelude to the inevitable.

He did in fact die at twenty-nine but lived just long enough to give us one of the undisputed masterpieces of world cinema, 'L'Atalante'. Let us give thanks for that.

I first saw this as part of a school film study in 1960. THEN as I recall, I merely saw a creaky old French travelogue highlighting more or less a day in the life of a town on the French Cote D'Azur that bore less relevance, to ME at least, than the rather staid and somewhat uninspiring biscuits named after it!

I saw A PROPOS DE NICE again some forty years later at a lowly patronised French Film Festival which had been hurridly organised apparently by Sydney University. What I saw THAT night, with the advantage of four decades of life's experiences, was a superbly constructed attack on, or should I say "de-construction" OF - the Bourgois. Vigo, himself an anarchist to his left femur, relentlessly piles on the satire with images of the "respected" upper-class acting anything but respectfully.

Innovative indeed was the cinematography from Boris Kaufman with intentionally tilted aspects of buildings to lessen their grandeur, use of shadow and striking images of the people (love the Brit tourists nursing their fish and chips) as they go about their daily business.

Essential viewing for students of early French cinema.