The most acclaimed (and sentimental) film in Jean Vigo's short career. L'Atalante is the name of the barge owned by Jean (Jean Daste), who marries the lovely Juliette (Dita Parlo) at the film's beginning. Juliette comes to live aboard the barge, for Jean makes his living on the Seine. The arrival of a woman on board disrupts the small crew, but they do their best to make her welcome. The solitude and boredom soon take their toll on Juliette, so Jean brings her ashore for a night at a cafe in
Paris. He becomes jealous of a flirtation between Juliette and a peddler, and when she leaves the ship again later, Jean casts off from the port. This dark love story is also peppered with hallucinations and unusual camerawork. A restored version was made available in 1990. ~ John Voorhees, Rovi
The action is episodic and diffuse but Michel Simon, as the dour and cat-loving barge hand lends a bit of comic relief to the pallidly poetic proceedings.
It is on many lists of the greatest films, a distinction that obscures how down to earth it is, how direct in its story of a new marriage off to a shaky start.
It's hard to imagine what more might have come from this fertile mind, but even with his precious, tiny output, Vigo remains one of the cinema's great masters.
Criterion's loving Blu-ray omnibus of one of cinema's most celebrated martyrs provides three hours of poetic catharsis at 1080 progressively scanned lines of resolution.
Blending naturalism and surrealism, this is a work of unique poetic power, a masterpiece that anticipated neo-realism by a decade; the fact that it's Vigo sole completed feature doesn't lessen his status as one of the world's greatest filmmakers.
A cine-poem ode to the rhythms of life and love set on a barge travelling along the Seine, Jean Vigo's L'Atalante stands as one of cinema's indisputable masterpieces.
A young barge skipper brings his new wife to live on board the ship L'atalante with him; confined to the boat, she grows bored, leading to domestic tragedy. Simple and charming, with comic relief and memorable, poetic shots; a minor classic, though fans of sentimental romances will consider it a must see title in the
genre.
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