L'Atalante
| L'Atalante | |
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| Directed by | Jean Vigo |
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| Produced by | Jacques-Louis Nounez |
| Written by | Jean Guinée Albert Riéra Jean Vigo |
| Starring | Michel Simon Dita Parlo Jean Dasté |
| Music by | Maurice Jaubert |
| Cinematography | Boris Kaufman |
| Editing by | Louis Chavance |
| Release date(s) | September 12, 1934 |
| Running time | 89 min. |
| Country |  France |
| Language | French |
L'Atalante (also released as Le chaland qui passe) is a 1934 French film directed by Jean Vigo and starring Jean Dasté, Dita Parlo and Michel Simon. It has been hailed by many critics as one of the best films of all time.
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Plot summary
Jean (Jean Dasté), captain of the canal barge L'Atalante, has a new wife, Juliette (Dita Parlo). They are married, having hardly met, in Juliette's provincial town. The opening sequence — the newlyweds' march from the church to Jean's boat — is filmed in a discontinuous style that anticipates the films of the French New Wave.
The couple embark on a trip between Le Havre and Paris which functions doubly as a cargo delivery and as their makeshift honeymoon. Tensions arise with the crew, who are not used to the presence of a woman. Most of the conflict, however, stems from Jean who flies into a jealous rage, smashing plates and sending cats scattering every which way, when he discovers Juliette and first mate Jules (Michel Simon), an obsessive cat lover, talking in the latter's quarters.
Arriving in Paris, Jean and Juliette go to a music club. There they meet a street peddler who flirts with Juliette leading to a scuffle with Jean. Growing disaffected with barge life and enamored with the lights of Paris, Juliette runs off. Jean, furious, casts off, leaving her behind. He becomes very depressed so that Jules decides to look for her and bring her back.
Cast
- Michel Simon — Le père Jules
- Dita Parlo — Juliette
- Jean Dasté — Jean
- Gilles Margaritis — Le camelot
- Louis Lefebvre — Le gosse
- Maurice Gilles — Le chef de bureau
- Raphaël Diligent — Raspoutine, le batelier (as Rafa Diligent)
Production and release
The film's much-lauded cinematography was by Boris Kaufman, the brother of Soviet film maker Dziga Vertov. He would later go on to shoot Hollywood films such as On the Waterfront (1954). He described his years working with Vigo as "cinematic paradise".
The original distributors cut the film's running 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 song from the time, which was also inserted into the film. The film was restored to 89 minutes in 1990 in a version released on videotape. The entire film was restored in a version released on DVD in 2001.
Reception and influence
The film has been praised for its prescient poetic realist style. Upon its release, the French art historian Elie Faure found the film "classical, almost violent and always tormented, fevered, overflowing with ideas and with fantasy; truculent; a virulent and even demonical romanticism that still remains humanistic".
The film became a favorite of the filmmakers of the French New Wave, whose films contain many allusions to Vigo's work. The French director Francois Truffaut fell in love with it when he saw it at age 14 in 1946: "When I entered the theater, I didn't even know who Jean Vigo was. I was immediately overwhelmed with wild enthusiasm for his work".
Yugoslavian film director Emir Kusturica has said he is a big admirer of Vigo's work and describes Vigo as a poet. This admiration is best shown in Kusturica's Underground, where the underwater scenes are very reminiscent of those from L'Atalante.[1]
L'Atalante was chosen as the 10th-greatest film of all time in British journal Sight & Sound's 1962 poll, and as the 6th-best in its 1992 poll.
Miscellany
References
External links
- L'Atalante at the Internet Movie Database
- L'Atalante at Allmovie
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