Taris, roi de l'eau

I recently viewed a rather good student film that explored "liquid memories," by setting the imagination in the mild ocean. It reminded me that it was time to re-view the films that first got the sleeve of my imagination caught in the machinery of cinema, those films that explore architectural water.

Of them, I believe this to be the first. (If I am wrong, please let me know.)

This is ostensibly a film about a man in his water kingdom. He gives a "tour," as if the kingdom were defined by how you move and breath, and there is a rather clumsy bit at the end where he walks into the waterworld in his "ordinary" suit.

But where it shines is in how it depicts that world, glimmering, swirling. Sometimes, even though you know what you are looking at, you cannot get your own bearings. You cannot see exactly where you are. this business of immersion and world-definition is important -- I think -- to how we understand all worlds in film.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

The second of Vigo's four films is about 10 minutes long. The subject, allegedly, is a French national swimming champion, Jean Taris. First we see him swimming normally. Then we see a hint that this isn't a documentary short: Taris dives into the water, Vigo runs the film backwards, and Taris is spit back out. This happens 3 times. Thus the crux of the film: inventive (for the time) technique, while overuse of it occurs. Fun stuff, though: interesting shots of Taris doing the backstroke. Finally, we see him goofing around underwater; by this point, the movie achieves a genuine state of grace. Can be found on No. 10 of the New York Film Annex's video series of experimental and abstract films.

Jean Vigo takes a short time of our lives to present something that impresses us for a long time with the short documentary "Taris, roi de l'eau" and he does that with a boundless simplicity. In ten minutes, he presents Taris, a famous swimmer showing the different swimming techniques and Vigo's camera gives us details on the movements of the swimmer on the water, everything very impressive.

The ordinary viewer will find nothing special about it but to me I find quite interesting the way images of a not so simple act has the ability of being translated to the screen in a enormous facility, swimming looks so easy (yeah, of course he's a trained swimmer but still) and it really makes you want to get out and swim for a while. It's that impressive, it's that beautiful. Some of the techniques Vigo used here like reversing the image backwards when the swimmer is jumping on the pool were very innovative at the time and quite funny now, but even so it's cool to see it.

Considering that today's short films have more substance and more things to present, and with all these advantage sometimes they fail to really grab our attention even for five minutes is that I look back to something like "Taris, roi de l'eau" ("Taris, King of the Water") and I think how moved and impressed I was with such a simple work of art. That's the role of art in everything: take the most ordinary thing of life and make of it something beautiful. Vigo really did it here. 10/10

A commissioned work, this wasn't only disliked by the producers who hired him, as a result possibly edited without his consent to its final form (Michael Temple on the Criterion commentary track suggests that perhaps Jean Renoir was one of the directors called in), this was reportedly disavowed by Vigo himself, who apparently said that he only liked the underwater footage.

In many respects this is an experiment on various cinematic techniques: Vigo had already utilized and mastered the use of slow-motion in "À propos de Nice" (1930); here he uses transposed images and reversed footage in addition to some exquisite slow-motion of Taris swimming in the water. (Temple points out that the underwater shot of Taris goofing around is a laboratory of sorts for "L'Atalante" (1934), which would use an almost similar underwater shot)

But this is transcendental in the sense Vigo sees both water and the human body, like a sculpture come to life. Water, one of the most cinematic things in the whole world, is a character of its own here. It's the kingdom whose king Taris is, as implied in the title. In that sense this is also a fête of the human body and its power over the element.

And, most important, it's fun.

Essentially a 'how-to-swim' piece that, in the hands of someone less talented and individualistic than Jean Vigo, would have been forgotten years ago, Taris is transformed by the director's unique and original imagination into something much more. He captures some terrific underwater shots of Taris swimming and horsing around, and manages to add a few trademark surreal touches and camera trickery to ensure that the viewer's interest never wanes. It is still essentially a film about swimming, but it manages to capture both Taris's mastery of his sport and his enthusiasm for it. Worth a watch if you have a spare ten minutes.