L'Atalante
Jean Vigo
Jean and Juliette marry. He captains a barge. She has never left her village. The young woman, who imagined adventure, finds her new life rather boring and dictated by the life of the barge. She does get to talk with Père Jules who, charmed by "the missus", tells her about his exotic, adventurous life. When a peddler flirts with Juliette, promising to show her the big-city lights, she sneaks off the barge one night. Jean, in a jealous rage, casts off without her.
With : Michel Simon, Dita Parlo, Jean Dasté, Louis Lefebvre, Gilles Margaritis
Screenplay : Jean Vigo, Albert Riéra
Image : Boris Kaufman
Sound : Marcel Royné
Editing : Louis Chavance
Music : Maurice Jaubert
Screenplay : Jean Vigo, Albert Riéra
Image : Boris Kaufman
Sound : Marcel Royné
Editing : Louis Chavance
Music : Maurice Jaubert
Production : Argui-Films, Gaumont Franco Film Aubert (GFFA)
Distribution: Gaumont
Distribution: Gaumont
L'Atalante is the archetypal film maudit. Jean Vigo's second, and last, feature film (after Zero for conduct) was a box-office disaster that was subsequently altered and re-edited numerous times. It was even retitled Le chaland qui passe, and was stripped of Maurice Jaubert's original music. "L'Atalante treats a difficult subject matter rarely seen on the screen: the beginning of a young couple's life together, the difficulty of adapting to each other with the initial euphoria, the first quarrels, then rebellion, running off, reconciliation and finally acceptance of each other. (...) Vigo learned a lot while shooting Zero for conduct , and this time he attains perfection. (...) He put nothing in front of the camera but reality, gave it a surrealistic twist and, filming its prose, arrived without effort at the poetic. (...) He reconciles two great cinematographic tendencies: realism and estheticism." (F. Truffaut, The Films in my Life)