[go: up one dir, main page]

    Release calendarTop 250 moviesMost popular moviesBrowse movies by genreTop box officeShowtimes & ticketsMovie newsIndia movie spotlight
    What's on TV & streamingTop 250 TV showsMost popular TV showsBrowse TV shows by genreTV news
    What to watchLatest trailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb SpotlightFamily entertainment guideIMDb Podcasts
    OscarsEmmysToronto Int'l Film FestivalIMDb Stars to WatchSTARmeter AwardsAwards CentralFestival CentralAll events
    Born todayMost popular celebsCelebrity news
    Help centerContributor zonePolls
For industry professionals
  • Language
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Watchlist
Sign in
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Use app
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
IMDbPro

À propos de Nice

  • 1930
  • Not Rated
  • 25m
IMDb RATING
7.3/10
4.9K
YOUR RATING
À propos de Nice (1930)
SatireTravel DocumentaryComedyDocumentaryShort

What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Cote d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Cote d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Cote d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.

  • Directors
    • Boris Kaufman
    • Jean Vigo
  • Writers
    • Jean Vigo
    • Boris Kaufman
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.3/10
    4.9K
    YOUR RATING
    • Directors
      • Boris Kaufman
      • Jean Vigo
    • Writers
      • Jean Vigo
      • Boris Kaufman
    • 26User reviews
    • 23Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • Photos50

    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    + 44
    View Poster

    User reviews26

    7.34.8K
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10

    Featured reviews

    chaos-rampant

    Dziga Vertov / Côte d'Azur

    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.
    uds3

    How the experienced eye captures that which the youthful eye cannot interpret.

    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.
    10ilpohirvonen

    I salute thee, Jean Vigo

    Even that Jean Vigo's production is one of the smallest ones in the history of cinema, many film historians see him as one of the greatest filmmaker ever lived. He only had the time to make four films before his death in 1934, two of them are very well known. Zéro de conduite: Jeunes diables au collège (1933) and L'Atalante (1934), the latter is often seen as the most beautiful film ever made. It's also his only full lenght film. The other two films by him are a bit more rare, a documentary about the winning swimmer, Jean Taris: Jean Taris, Swimming Champion (1931) and his first film À propos de Nice (1930). The film is about a French coastal town - it is amazing how someone cann tell everything in less than a half an hour.

    It's hard to picture anyone else to make this film, but Jean Vigo. He knows just where to put the camera and when. À propos de Nice is a very intense portrait of a city, colored with black humor. It basically shows social injustice that lies in the city of pleasures. There are many lyrical realizations in À propos de Nice, for instance the gambling, the sea and the shore. The documentary plays very beautifully like a poem, like Francois Truffaut has said "Jean Vigo effortlessly reached poetry". But the lyricism isn't the only poetic thing in À propos de Nice, it has also got poetic realism and surrealistic visions.

    The gambling shown in À propos de Nice is actually very interesting, why is it shown? I've read somewhere interpretations, which say that it shows the economical order, which is based on coincidence, cheating and inhumanity. The antithesis of the richness and poverty is one of the most interesting things in this film. Somewhere in the city people crafts products with their hands, they still have the touch to their products to their work. But then Jean Vigo shows the other side, the Nizza of gambling places and carnivals, where the moral and mental death lies.
    8framptonhollis

    Vigo's Earliest Film

    "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.
    7gavin6942

    Class Warfare in 1930s France

    What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Cote d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.

    This is a subversive silent film inspired by Bolshevik newsreels which considered social inequity in 1920s Nice. Vigo himself said, "In this film, by showing certain basic aspects of a city, a way of life is put on trial... the last gasps of a society so lost in its escapism that it sickens you and makes you sympathetic to a revolutionary solution." Historically, the film is interesting not just for its class commentary, but for the involvement of Boris Kaufman, who was a virtual unknown before working as a cinematographer on "On the Waterfront" (1954).

    More like this

    Taris, roi de l'eau
    6.7
    Taris, roi de l'eau
    Zéro de conduite: Jeunes diables au collège
    7.2
    Zéro de conduite: Jeunes diables au collège
    L'Atalante
    7.7
    L'Atalante
    Berlin, symphonie d'une grande ville
    7.6
    Berlin, symphonie d'une grande ville
    La pluie
    7.2
    La pluie
    Le lâche
    7.6
    Le lâche
    Les hommes le dimanche
    7.3
    Les hommes le dimanche
    Après la tempête
    6.0
    Après la tempête
    Entr'acte
    7.3
    Entr'acte
    Bedside
    6.2
    Bedside
    Jimmie Lunceford and His Dance Orchestra
    6.4
    Jimmie Lunceford and His Dance Orchestra
    Terre sans pain
    7.3
    Terre sans pain

    Related interests

    Peter Sellers in Dr. Folamour ou : comment j'ai appris à ne plus m'en faire et à aimer la bombe (1964)
    Satire
    Anthony Bourdain in Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (2013)
    Travel Documentary
    Will Ferrell in Présentateur vedette: La légende de Ron Burgundy (2004)
    Comedy
    Dziga Vertov in L'Homme à la caméra (1929)
    Documentary
    Benedict Cumberbatch in La merveilleuse histoire d'Henry Sugar (2023)
    Short

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The movie was financed by Vigo's father-in-law.
    • Connections
      Edited into Avant-garde Cinema (1960)

    Top picks

    Sign in to rate and Watchlist for personalized recommendations
    Sign in

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • May 28, 1930 (France)
    • Country of origin
      • France
    • Language
      • None
    • Also known as
      • À propos de Nice - point de vue documenté
    • Filming locations
      • Hotel Palais de la Méditeranée, Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France(interiors gutted)
    • Production company
      • Pathé-Natan
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      • 25m
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Sound mix
      • Silent
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.33 : 1

    Contribute to this page

    Suggest an edit or add missing content
    • Learn more about contributing
    Edit page

    More to explore

    Recently viewed

    Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
    Get the IMDb App
    Sign in for more accessSign in for more access
    Follow IMDb on social
    Get the IMDb App
    For Android and iOS
    Get the IMDb App
    • Help
    • Site Index
    • IMDbPro
    • Box Office Mojo
    • License IMDb Data
    • Press Room
    • Advertising
    • Jobs
    • Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Your Ads Privacy Choices
    IMDb, an Amazon company

    © 1990-2025 by IMDb.com, Inc.