L'Atalante is frequently cited as one of the greatest movies ever made. This judgement clearly baffles many people. Having just viewed the fully-restored 1991 version on DVD, I confess to being one of them.
The print now looks great, with good detail and only the occasional scratch, so we can finally appreciate the exquisite cinematography. Scenes that were trimmed or deleted by distributors and censors have now been restored, along with the original music track. Apparently, this version is as close to Vigo's original cut as will ever be possible.
This statement needs qualification. Vigo fell ill shortly after shooting and L'Atalante was cut by an editor with only minimal involvement by him. Moreover, it is still only a rough cut. It was originally planned to do some further tightening.
L'Atalante undoubtedly has its merits. Vigo used the trite story as a framework from which to hang a number of notably good scenes which often veer off in unexpected directions. It has a loose, lyrical quality that evokes poetry rather than prose.
Unusually for early Sound movies, much of it was shot on location, but I am not sure how much. The interiors look cramped enough to have been shot on an actual barge and this would account for the tight close-ups, awkward camera angles and strange compositions (in one scene both protagonists go briefly out of shot, leaving an empty screen), but there are also indications that these scenes were shot on studio sets (e.g., the shot from inside Jules's cupboard).
In both subject and treatment, L'Atalante looks and feels quite different to other films of its time and its quirkiness can be a refreshing change from the predictability of most other movies. However, much of that quirkiness is simply incompetence. Vigo had a great visual sense and the movie often looks ravishing, but in most other respects his grasp of movie technique was still somewhat weak.
Cinematically, he was still rooted in the Silent era. Dialogue is little more than background sound and rarely adds much to the visuals. Most of it was improvised by the actors (never a good idea). The soporific pacing that alienates many modern viewers was simply the characteristic pacing of Silent films.
At the micro level, the cutting is often very amateurish. Vigo doesn't know when to enter or leave scenes. Shots are assembled out of sequence, so that visual information is only given after it is needed. Sometimes, it is not given at all: for example, we only know about the near-collision with another barge through the dialogue, not the visuals. Individual shots don't cut together properly (e.g., the sequence of Juliette discovering that the barge has gone). Often, we simply don't know where we are until half-way through a scene. We cut to Juliette in Jules's Aladdin's cave of a cabin without any preparation (she has shown no curiosity about how he lives) and don't even know where we are until he turns up to tell us.
Individually, these examples could be dismissed as mere quibbles but they occur in almost every scene.
At a macro level, the movie has a weak dramatic structure: it alternately gallops and crawls. Marginal scenes run on far too long (the gramophone scene, the checkers game, the bar scene with the peddler, and so on) while essential scenes are truncated or missing altogether.
It doesn't even tell its simple story very effectively. Scenes don't flow naturally from one to another, so story jerks forward in fits and starts. The evolving relationship between Jean and Juliette (and her growing frustration with life on the barge) is actually quite poorly documented. Jean's decision to abandon Juliette in Paris is under-motivated. We see almost nothing of how she survives there. We see Jean's distracted manner after her loss, but not the neglect of duty that alarms the barge owners and puts the crew's livelihood at risk. The recovery of Juliette is simply miraculous. One second, Jules is in Le Havre, the next he wandering aimlessly around Paris. He hears music coming from a record shop and - Hey Presto!
At the end, the characters are nearly as opaque as at the beginning.
For all the excellence of the cinematography and the originality of individual scenes, Vigo's 'let's make it up as we go' approach means that L'Atalante is little more than a glorified home movie. It is so choppy that it feels like he shot a three-hour movie and lost half the reels, so he had to do the best he could with what was left.
In the Thirties, L'Atalante sank without trace, but it was rediscovered after the War by the French directors of the 'New Wave'. They were becoming increasingly frustrated with the stodgy movies of their time and soon found ways to slash through the plodding story-telling conventions of established movie-makers. I can understand why they saw Vigo as a pioneer and came to laud L'Atalante as a precursor of everything they were trying to do.
Nonetheless, you have to master the rules before you can throw away the rule book. In 1933, Vigo was still learning how to make movies. If he had been able to supervise the editing of L'Atalante it might have been a somewhat more accomplished picture: but then again it might not. Zero de Conduite suggests he was still on a steep learning curve.
Vigo had a unique sensibility and was a singular voice in the cinema. If he had lived long enough to make a few more pictures he might well have given us a really good movie. Then, even his most delirious advocates might see L'Atalante for what I believe it to be: not a fully-achieved work in its own right, but a fascinating, still very flawed, practice piece.
The print now looks great, with good detail and only the occasional scratch, so we can finally appreciate the exquisite cinematography. Scenes that were trimmed or deleted by distributors and censors have now been restored, along with the original music track. Apparently, this version is as close to Vigo's original cut as will ever be possible.
This statement needs qualification. Vigo fell ill shortly after shooting and L'Atalante was cut by an editor with only minimal involvement by him. Moreover, it is still only a rough cut. It was originally planned to do some further tightening.
L'Atalante undoubtedly has its merits. Vigo used the trite story as a framework from which to hang a number of notably good scenes which often veer off in unexpected directions. It has a loose, lyrical quality that evokes poetry rather than prose.
Unusually for early Sound movies, much of it was shot on location, but I am not sure how much. The interiors look cramped enough to have been shot on an actual barge and this would account for the tight close-ups, awkward camera angles and strange compositions (in one scene both protagonists go briefly out of shot, leaving an empty screen), but there are also indications that these scenes were shot on studio sets (e.g., the shot from inside Jules's cupboard).
In both subject and treatment, L'Atalante looks and feels quite different to other films of its time and its quirkiness can be a refreshing change from the predictability of most other movies. However, much of that quirkiness is simply incompetence. Vigo had a great visual sense and the movie often looks ravishing, but in most other respects his grasp of movie technique was still somewhat weak.
Cinematically, he was still rooted in the Silent era. Dialogue is little more than background sound and rarely adds much to the visuals. Most of it was improvised by the actors (never a good idea). The soporific pacing that alienates many modern viewers was simply the characteristic pacing of Silent films.
At the micro level, the cutting is often very amateurish. Vigo doesn't know when to enter or leave scenes. Shots are assembled out of sequence, so that visual information is only given after it is needed. Sometimes, it is not given at all: for example, we only know about the near-collision with another barge through the dialogue, not the visuals. Individual shots don't cut together properly (e.g., the sequence of Juliette discovering that the barge has gone). Often, we simply don't know where we are until half-way through a scene. We cut to Juliette in Jules's Aladdin's cave of a cabin without any preparation (she has shown no curiosity about how he lives) and don't even know where we are until he turns up to tell us.
Individually, these examples could be dismissed as mere quibbles but they occur in almost every scene.
At a macro level, the movie has a weak dramatic structure: it alternately gallops and crawls. Marginal scenes run on far too long (the gramophone scene, the checkers game, the bar scene with the peddler, and so on) while essential scenes are truncated or missing altogether.
It doesn't even tell its simple story very effectively. Scenes don't flow naturally from one to another, so story jerks forward in fits and starts. The evolving relationship between Jean and Juliette (and her growing frustration with life on the barge) is actually quite poorly documented. Jean's decision to abandon Juliette in Paris is under-motivated. We see almost nothing of how she survives there. We see Jean's distracted manner after her loss, but not the neglect of duty that alarms the barge owners and puts the crew's livelihood at risk. The recovery of Juliette is simply miraculous. One second, Jules is in Le Havre, the next he wandering aimlessly around Paris. He hears music coming from a record shop and - Hey Presto!
At the end, the characters are nearly as opaque as at the beginning.
For all the excellence of the cinematography and the originality of individual scenes, Vigo's 'let's make it up as we go' approach means that L'Atalante is little more than a glorified home movie. It is so choppy that it feels like he shot a three-hour movie and lost half the reels, so he had to do the best he could with what was left.
In the Thirties, L'Atalante sank without trace, but it was rediscovered after the War by the French directors of the 'New Wave'. They were becoming increasingly frustrated with the stodgy movies of their time and soon found ways to slash through the plodding story-telling conventions of established movie-makers. I can understand why they saw Vigo as a pioneer and came to laud L'Atalante as a precursor of everything they were trying to do.
Nonetheless, you have to master the rules before you can throw away the rule book. In 1933, Vigo was still learning how to make movies. If he had been able to supervise the editing of L'Atalante it might have been a somewhat more accomplished picture: but then again it might not. Zero de Conduite suggests he was still on a steep learning curve.
Vigo had a unique sensibility and was a singular voice in the cinema. If he had lived long enough to make a few more pictures he might well have given us a really good movie. Then, even his most delirious advocates might see L'Atalante for what I believe it to be: not a fully-achieved work in its own right, but a fascinating, still very flawed, practice piece.