Directed by Jean Vigo
89 minutes
In French with English subtitles

French director Jean Vigo made only a handful of films before he died at the early age of 29. His father was an imprisoned anarchist, and Jean was a visual poet - a virtual gymnast of the cinema, flexing cinema's muscles and smashing open new possibilities. He fused together surrealism, acute social commentary, playfulness, and lyricism to make an intoxicating, dreamy cinema. His movies are both romantic and anti-romantic at the same time.

L’Atalante was his only feature, and he died while finishing it. It charts the troubled relationship of two people who live on a barge, floating the rivers and canals. The movie is less story-driven than it is a series of moments and moods. It was filmed in the winter of 1933 while the director was suffering from tuberculosis.

The film is perilous, and the love of the two seems somehow fated, giving the film a deep reverberation. After the director finished it, the studio (Gaumant) started chopping it to pieces, and finally released it in a 65 minute version. In 1990 it was finally restored to its original length of 89 minutes. It is considered one of the classics of poetic cinema, and features the beloved actor-magician-smuggler-boxer Michel Simon. So let's dive into the deep end, the otherworldly realm of cinema-poet Jean Vigo.