Taris, roi de l'eau

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.

Jean Vigo knows he can't be too bland with a subject like swimming, no matter how good the swimmer might be in his style and speed and graceful varieties of stroke (so to speak). Jean Taris is actually an excellent swimmer, as Vigo makes abundantly clear within the first minute: in a simple over-head shot, with the occasional close-up cut-away, we see Taris defeat his opponents in a swimming race lickety split. But it's how Vigo then treats the whole nature of how to instruct the audience on a topic that makes it worthwhile to find (it's available on you-tube, by the way). We hear the Taris voice-over describe the different movements that can be used- including the "new" one, called the breast-stroke- and that, simply, swimming cannot be taught indoors. Vigo puts his words into an assemblage of images that reminded me of the great scene in L'Atalante with the character Jean underwater, only here taken steps further, and visually it's always a wild little treat.

Like his Apropos de Nice movie, Vigo is out to explore possibilities with the frame and the camera and certain techniques that today might come off a tiny bit goofy, but nevertheless display a true resiliency on part of the filmmaker and his technical crew (notably Boris Kaufman). It's all experimentation, but it ends up working better in its favor due to the step-by-step narration and detail. A constant image is that of the swimmer going backwards out of the water into original diving pose, which doesn't lose its appeal as eye-catching. There are also the many tight close-ups from a multitude of angles as the swimmer goes about his instruction: his arms, his feet kicking, his face trying best not to somehow get too much water in the mouth while breathing. And perhaps the most interesting bit when we see the swimmer underwater, likely seen through an aquarium or some other safe place for the camera, and the Taris goes through many different movements. What begins as a relatively easy-going tutorial short on film, by way of the inventiveness of the filmmaker, becomes something much better- a subjective lesson in the art of swimming.

There's even a touch of the absurd to much of it, as is the way of the director in his works, like when he does show a man trying to swim indoors, on a chair. And the final images, by the way, are definitely the best, as one last time the swimmer comes up onto the side of the pool backwards, then is seen in a business suit, jacket and hat, and in a great super-imposition walks ahead into the water. Whatever it might mean, I can't say, but throughout as Vigo's eye follows this man on his lesson to those who wonder 'can I be like him', there are moments of wonderful exercises in limitless cinematic expression too. 8.5/10

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.

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.