There is also some plausible connection to Puccini's Il Tabarro. One interesting sidelight I just learned: the cinematographer was Boris Kaufmann who went on to Hollywood -- On the Waterfront is his work. The whole story of Vigo -- whose anarchist father committed suicide using shoelaces his son had just bought for him!-- is completely amazing. There was a whole coterie of anarchist surrealist artists that gathered around Vigo, drawn to his vision and high spirits. Vigo's amazingly beautiful wife, Lydu (there is a picture of the two of them, like doomed gods), who was ill as well, died four years after her husband, also of TB.

yours, Peter T.