Great Movies: L'Atalante

Subject: Great Movies: L'Atalante
From: Peter T.
Date: 02 Jul 03 - 10:45 AM

After many years of hearing about "L'Atalante", I was finally able to see the restored version last night, and it is everything people said about it. The director, Jean Vigo (who also filmed Zero de Conduite, the source for "If"), was dying of tuberculosis during the filming, and died the week before the film opened (1934). It was subsequently cut to ribbons by an unsympathetic studio, and was only painstakingly reassembled in 1990. What makes it such a great film is the feeling throughout that the world is strange and new -- Vigo's anarchist strain somehow works its way into the vision of the film.

The story is simple, mythical: a girl in a village along the Seine marries a barge captain, and they sail off together towards Paris. Trouble ensues -- the barge is cramped, the husband is uncertain, there are dancehalls enroute, and there is a radio that beckons "Paris calling". The new wife abandons ship in Paris, and the rest of the film is about the myth of possible loss and return.

Everything in the film is fresh and beautiful, as if no one had ever made a film before, so it has a clumsy innocence and energy as well. There are scenes of such beauty that the heart stops -- the bride in her wedding dress walking down the roof of the sooty barge, the fog draping the Seine, crazy music boxes, junkyards, rubble. More than anything however, the film creates its own deep archtypal myths: something deep about a barge on a river, riverbanks of other worlds, sunlight on water, the magic of a sailor's many voyages, and some inner connection between the two lovers that hoops them together, even though apart. Like most great things, there is a kind of sadness in L'Atalante as well, as if everything truly beautiful is tinged with the potential for loss, and the myth helps us cope with that in some unknown way.

I see that it is now on DVD -- if you like old movies, and French old movies in particular, L'Atalante is in the same league as Les Enfants du Paradis, and Regle de Jeu -- no faint praise.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Great Movies: L'Atalante
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Jul 03 - 01:43 PM

Here's an equally enthusiastic article about L'Atalante from The Guardian - according to which Jean Vigo died (aged 29) after the film had been butchered by the studio, and released:

Gaumont found the film commercially worthless, hacked it to pieces and retitled it Le Chaland Qui Passe (The Passing Barge), inserting a popular song of that name into the sound-track. It was advertised as "a film inspired by the celebrated sung so admirably song by Lys Gauty".

Only a few days after the first, disappointing run ended, Vigo died. His beloved wife Lydou, lying beside him, got up from the bed and ran down a long corridor to a room at the end of it. Friends caught her as she was about to jump out of the window.

Very sad. I look forward to seeing the restored version sometime.

Actually, since the song, Le Chaland Qui Passe had been published in 1931, it's not impossible that it might actually have inspired the film. Not at all a bad song either - here are the words, lifted from this site:

LE CHALAND QUI PASSE

La nuit s'est faite,
La berge s'estompe et s'endort
Seule au passage
Une auberge cligne ses yeux d'or
Le chaland glisse
Et j'emporte, d'un geste vainqueur
Ton jeune corps qui m'apporte
L'inconnu moqueur
De son cœur

Ne pensons à rien ,le courant
Fait toujours de nous, des errants
Sur mon chaland sautant d'un quai
L'amour peut-être s'est embarqué
Aimons-nous ce soir sans songer
À ce que demain peut changer
Au fil de l'eau point de serments:
Ce n'est que sur terre qu'on ment!

Pourquoi chercher à connaître
Quel fut ton passé?
Je n'ouvre point de fenêtre
Sur les cœurs blessés
Garde pour toi ton histoire
Véridique ou non
Je n'ai pas besoin d'y croire
Le meilleur chainon
C'est ton nom

Ne pensons à rien le courant
Fait de nous toujours des errants
Sur mon chaland sautant d'un quai
L'amour peut-être s'est embarqué
Aimons-nous ce soir sans songer
À ce que demain peut changer
Au fil de l'eau point de serment
Ce n'est que sur terre qu'on ment.

Subject: RE: Great Movies: L'Atalante
From: Peter T.
Date: 02 Jul 03 - 02:11 PM

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.

Subject: RE: Great Movies: L'Atalante
From: Alba
Date: 02 Jul 03 - 02:41 PM

I will most certainly look out for the DVD Peter.
Les Enfants du Paradis is truly one of my Favorites so I know I would enjoy "L'Atalante"
Thank you for posting the information.
A:>)

Subject: RE: Great Movies: L'Atalante
From: mouldy
Date: 03 Jul 03 - 02:48 AM

You can get it on video, via Amazon (I did last year).
I watched the film at college in 1970, as part of our film studies, and was hooked.

Andrea

Subject: RE: Great Movies: L'Atalante
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Jul 03 - 03:51 AM

But in 1970 it would likely have been the "butchered" version, wouldn't it? Still pretty good.

Subject: RE: Great Movies: L'Atalante
From: mouldy
Date: 04 Jul 03 - 02:31 AM

I suppose it must have been, as there was a massive 30 year gap before I saw it again (last year). Of course I don't remember any mention of it being interfered with in 1970. Perhaps nobody realised. Anyway, it was just one among many early movies we were watching. But there was something about this one...

From a "girly" point of view, (and not being too caught up with analysing it), it's one to watch on a miserable rainy afternoon with a big mug of hot chocolate! According to the notes on the video, it has been voted (by publications that are into doing that sort of thing) one of the "10 best films of all time".

Andrea