L'Atalante

Newly married couple Juliette and a ship captain Jean struggle through marriage as they travel on the L'atalante along with the captain's first mate Le père Jules and a cabin boy.

"L'Atalante" was mutilated by its distributor. Gaumont cut the film's run time to 65 minutes in an attempt to make it more popular and changed the title to Le chaland qui passe ("The Passing Barge"), the name of a popular song at the time by Lys Gauty, which was also inserted into the film, replacing parts of Jaubert's score. Vigo was too weak to defend the film as his condition grew worse. The film was a commercial failure, which is somewhat startling considering how it is now regarded as one of the all-time greats.

This film is what has made Jean Vigo so celebrated. It is his only full-length film, and one of only four films total. And yet he remains a towering figure in France approximately 80 years later.

Jean Vigo's 1934 work "L'Atalante" has a very timeless quality about it. It is far more visual than much of the early sound films that were released in America or abroad at the time, and really keeps more with the intensely artistic side of much of the best silent works. My eyes were completely transfixed on the screen the entire time, as I enjoyed the brilliant cinematography and took in the realistic, almost tragic, performances of the leads. Being very low on dialogue, or at least pertinent dialogue, and telling a rather simple story, this film may not be for everyone, but I would certainly highly recommend it for anyone who considers film to be an art form. Sadly Vigo dead within months of the film's release, and could not create any more masterpieces.

L'Atalante is one of those films that doesn't really survive it's critical reputation. It's not so much that it's overrated as that its status as a Cinematic Masterpiece by a French Auteur casts a heavy burden on it which the light, airy film can't escape.

But enough meta-criticism. Taken on its own, L'Atalante is a charming film about a honeymoon whose light nature and relaxed pace manages to immerse the audience in a realm of simple pleasure. There's little dialogue, and Vigo draws on the attractions of silent film, with a lot of light humour and simple representational images. It's a world you would want to step into, and one that you almost think you can.

Alas, things cannot stay so serene forever, and so trouble eventually arrives in our honeymooners' relationship. The plot is believable and well-observed, if not exactly captivating, but I have to say I missed the more leisurely early parts.

I can't help but compare L'Atalante with a film with a similar storyline and inverted structure, F. W. Murnau's Sunrise. L'Atalante undeniably comes off worse in the comparison: it simply doesn't achieve the epic grandeur that Sunrise does. That doesn't mean it's bad, but it seems unavoidably like a prototype for a film released in the previous decade, and that makes it hard to live up to the hype. Still, it's a nice experience, and that's more than you can say about most films.

'L'Atalante' is such a lovely film from director, Jean Vigo, a man whose career would have been marvelous to behold had he not died so young. This was his last film and there are stories that he directed many of the scenes while deathly ill. This movie is a genuine masterpiece and is a must-see for anyone who truly loves the art of film. 'L'Atalante' is one of the pioneering gems of cinema.

It is a simple story about the first few days of marriage aboard a barge traveling the canals of France. Dita Parlo plays Juliette, a haunting beauty and a dreamer who longs for adventure and excitement. Her husband, Jean, is a realist who doesn't mind the rugged life aboard his ship. She tries to domesticate her husband, showing him the wonders of laundry and neatness. He is so used to the bachelor life that he doesn't even see the need to change the sheets when one of the many cats on board has kittens in their bed.

Juliette struggles with her new life and longs to visit Paris so she can explore and shop and dance and eat. She wants a more elegant and romantic life. Barge life gets more complicated due to the oafish first mate, Jules, who lurches around in a perpetual stupor and acts obnoxiously at the drop of a hat, all the while being rather charming and interesting.

When the barge finally reaches Paris, the couple plans a trip to shore. But the plan gets waylaid by Jules who isn't around to guard the boat during their absence. After a confrontation, Juliette leaves to explore her Parisian dream without Jean. And when Jules finally returns, Jean decides to abandon his wife and sets a course down the river.

A plot summary doesn't really do the film justice. Vigo employs gorgeously original camera angles and a poetic method of storytelling that makes this film impossible to forget. It has racy and subtle humor. It deals with sexuality unlike any other film of the era. It has a fantasy sequence whose power has rarely been rivaled, even in today's special effects bonanza. 'L'Atalante' is way ahead of its time. Watching this film is like peering through a time portal to the beginning of modern filmmaking. 'Citizen Kane' is often cited as the most influential film ever made... but 'L'Atalante' was 'Citizen Kane' before 'Citizen Kane'. It is no wonder that it still appears on many lists of the greatest of all time.

I find it amazing that the film, shot 70 years ago, in soft light and occasionally blurred focus, still manages to evoke truly powerful emotions and tangible sensations. Vigo's shots are cold, foggy, cramped, dirty, awkward and hard. But he slips a few truly sublime poetic moments in there to lift our hearts. When Jean regrets his decision to abandon Juliette he jumps into the river. The underwater sequence is an ethereal and magical moment in cinema. Their resulting journeys back to one another is romantic and altogether truthful. The film encapsulates the awkward and difficult early days of marriage and the journey to the days beyond, where 'real' love starts to grow.

My big problem with "L'Atalante" is how much of what we see and hear was really Jean Vigo's intention (as he didn't finish it) when he was making it? The restored version is the only version and was reconstructed from many disparate bits about 15 years ago, meaning it has had running order interpretations foisted upon it. I think most of the film we see came from the BFI in London, remixed with other clips into some kind of logical sequence by Gaumont in Paris and sold as a Forgotten Masterpiece.

Well, if you can call such luck ending up as a masterpiece it was purely unintentional by Vigo - he didn't see what we do now.

What we have though is definitely a series of relentlessly beautiful, thought-provoking, impressionistic black and white images hung together for 87 minutes with a very flimsy story of 3 people on a barge. The kid was background fluff and doesn't really count. Simon was his usual farcical self, I wish he'd been background as well. Daste and Parla were both later in "La Grande Illusion", can you really forget her as the German widow Elsa in favour of this? The framings and compositions are wonderful to see - how important was it to include distant shots of power stations, cranes etc? Why did Daste stare right into the underwater camera? How come every available surface seems uncomfortable or strewn with bizarre objects or people? Why just the one short aerial shot? And so many other questions which are either pointless or beyond my intelligence; somebody somewhere must know!

I find every time I watch "L'Atalante" it grows on me - I thought it was pants in '91, now I think it's brill! We all move at different speeds - some people will never be able to see this as anything but boring while some people thought it was a classic before they saw it! Whereas I'm still on the voyage of discovery with this one and will definitely watch it again, but not as an indispensable film, more as akin to a trip to the Art Gallery.