MOVIE REVIEW: L'Atalante (1934)

[Peter666]

Released in 1934, 89 minutes, France
Directed by Jean Vigo
Starring Michel Simon, Jean Daste, Dita Parlo.

My vote for greatest movie ever made. The story is about a newly married couple who spend their honeymoon on a boat captained by the husband. Also on the boat are the first mate, Pere Jules, a kid, and a bunch of cats. Tensions arise and are resolved.



The genius of this film lies in its ability to straddle realism, surrealism, drama, tragedy, profanity and spirituality all at once. Overall, they call it poetic realism. The backdrop is village, country side, industrial wasteland, big city, and of course the river, which runs through all of these.

The first mate, Pere Jules, played by Michel Simon, is cinema's great character. His extremely gruff exterior masks a profound sensibility. He is also very funny.


The cinematographer for this film was Boris Kaufman. He was the younger brother of Dziga Vertov who's masterpiece "Man with the Movie Camera" was recently reviewed. Its apparent.

The swimming scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR-k_Mp_P3A

Also to be noted is the beautiful romantic soundtrack.

Sadly, the director of the film, Jean Vigo would day a few days after the film's premiere. He was only 29. His fascinating life story is here:
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/conten...s/02/vigo.html

The film was restored with some new footage in 1990. Vigo was still making changes to the film from his deathbed, so it is not fully complete.

[Dominic]

I haven't seen this since film school...it is an amazing piece of film making.

[Blarg]

Wow, I have mentioned this film many times on 2+2 as one of my very favorites, and to my recollection have never gotten any indication that anyone else has ever heard of it, much less liked it. I'm crazy about it and thought it was well worth buying so I could keep watching it hopefully forever.

I love Dita Parlo in this movie, and Michel Simon is incredibly winning in this flick. The lovers' longing is so cool and interestingly done, you get a very strong sense of place, and the husband's lonely run to nowhere in increasing cognizance of his terrible mistake is great stuff. (Ably stolen by Truffaut in the last shot of The 400 Blows.)

This is the kind of movie that can make you fall in love with foreign flicks. It took a long time to get onto DVD, and I'm glad it's out there again so everyone can have a chance to enjoy it. Director Vigo's early death was a huge loss to cinema.

[John Cole]

I agree; it's one of the greats. This was a movie I had read about for years but never had the chance to see until its arrival on DVD.

And for the second film of the double feature, I'd recommend Boudu Saved from Drowning for Simon's other great performance.

[Blarg]

Heh! I've often considered Boudu my favorite movie, and it's usually at least in my top four. (HATED its butchered reversal in Down and Out in Beverly Hills by the otherwise really fun Paul Bartel, who here sells out completely.)

Michel Simon is so much fun to see on screen. And any film by Renoir, the director, is always worth checking out.

[Peter666]

So far I have the opinion of three known cinephiles, each with different tastes, agreeing that this is a materpiece. I am waiting for Pryor to make it a clean sweep.

I first saw this film on the big screen about 8 years ago. It was the second great film I saw in this format. The first was the "Earrings of Madame De..." another masterpiece.

Since then I have watched countless great films in their ideal format. But having rewatched L'Atalante was like a homecoming. Really, the movie has everything, and it anticipated Neo-Realism 10 years before it was "discovered". It is the oldest film I recall using underwater footage, plus a bird's eye view from the sky (the last gorgeous shot).

It think the one crucial scene that is still missing is a shot to establish time between the moment when Pere Jules is sitting in the city looking for the wife, and the moment he finds her thanks to her trick at the gramaphone parlour. But other than that the film stands on its own. It's flawless.

[Blarg]

I see to remember the ending feeling a little rushed and forced, but it was easily forgiveable.

These old flicks are great to see on the big screen, too. Their aspect ratio is fine for normal(non-widescreen) TV's, so you don't lose out by getting the sides chopped off like you do with later films, but while black and white can look kind of ordinary on most t.v.'s, it can look luminous on the big screen. I highly recommend people check these out in revival theaters and at the frequent showings of older films that film schools often have. And they often have them for free, or cheap. Seeing something on the big screen when you've already seen it on DVD is well worth it; it can feel like a different movie.

[Peter666]

Ha, our instincts were right on!:

"Nounez was quite happy with the results, but his associates were not, demanding several cuts Vigo reluctantly agreed to one major change—an extensive reduction of Père Jules’s search for Juliette in Le Havre—and the results were screened on 25 April 1934, for company representatives, exhibitors, and distributors. Most of them disliked the film, and Gaumont then decided to cut it much more..."

I think you'll enjoy this fascinating article on the history and restoration of the film:

http://www.coldbacon.com/movies/lata...rosenbaum.html

Very sad how Vigo's wife woke up to his corpse in the morning, and was caught before jumping out a window.

[ClassicBob]

Just watched this film (bumped up to the top of my queue because of this thread).

Absolutely loved it. The storyline is ridiculously simple, but it's shot and presented in such a beautiful manner that it is easily forgiven. Michael Simon's Jules is up there with Renoir's Octave from "The Rules of the Game" on the list of top characters.

Does anyone want to offer an assessment on Jules? Are we supposed to like him? He's kind of a dick, and I didn't feel like I should be rooting for him to get the girl, especially one so angelic as Juliette.

[Blarg]

He's headstrong and proud, and the movie is largely about how he gets humbled and how much his old way of thinking and doing things almost made him lose -- how close he came to his own heart's destruction. It's his despair and loneliness that make him realize what he took for granted, opening up other ways of feeling and acknowledging what's important, and what eventually winds up humanizing him for the viewer.

For that process to have its full impact, it helps that his change covers broader territory. It would be like shooting ducks in a barrel to have a weepy guy at the end of his rope; that sort of guy is already half there anyway and just waiting for an excuse. If love makes fools of us all, that's shown all the more so when it's a somewhat oblivious hard-arse, justifiably proud of his hard-won competence in the way life works and also in his insistence on living life the way he knows it can work, who comes to realize just how fragile his heart is and how much love means.

Although it's a very quick shot, by the time he runs to the sea and finds no way out of the biggest mistake of his life, then looks distraught and inconsolable into the camera directly at the viewer, I've forgiven him.