L’Atalante (France 1934): The romance of cinema

Jean Vigo when he made one of cinema’s poetic masterpieces was consumptive and likely had a keen awareness of the slender hold he had on life. L’Atalante was to be his last film and his enduring cinematic legacy. A simple romantic story told with a shimmering love for those that history ignores, for unaffected lives which have a glory beyond greatness, bound up in the simple verities. The early tentative days of a just-married couple have a romance and visual poetry tinged with the melancholy of the river’s flow, itself a metaphor for the ineluctable passing of time, and the ebbs and flows of life. A tale told without artifice and with a boundless optimism. A timeless story of young love, the tribulations of matrimony, the joys of friendship, the rewards of loyalty, and the delight from the comic mishaps that life thankfully can bring; along with the conflict, the suffering, and the heartache.

L’Atalante opens in a riverside village with the marriage of barge captain Jean and Juliette his bride, by following the wedding procession from the church to the river. These disjointed scenes have a droll rhythm that immediately have you engaged.  The barge’s first mate, a gruff crotchety older man ‘Le père Jules’, and a callow cabin boy get an advance on the wedding march, but not before Jules hurriedly backtracks to the church font to quickly make the sign of the cross. The bridal couple troop in total seriousness, and in silence, followed languidly by a far more relaxed wedding party. The mother of the bride is comforted by the father, while the rest straggle and find plenty to gossip about. A man at the tail end of the procession gives his partner a more than gentle giddy-up by patting her on the behind. We learn from the gossip that there will be no honeymoon. Juliette is to start married life on the barge in the cramped quarters below deck with Jean and his crew – and Jules’ harem of shipboard cats.

Jules and the cabin boy have raced ahead so that they can welcome the new “lady-boss” on board with a bunch of flowers. As they frantically prepare aboard for her impending arrival, we are regaled with a delightful slapstick around the flowers, the bucketful of water to keep them fresh, the river, and a kitten clinging to the shoulders of Jules’ coat as he lumbers about on deck.

After getting the bride safely on board, L’Atalante steams towards Paris with its cargo and crew.  Along with the ripples of the barge’s flow we see the young newlyweds running hot and cold; Juliette setting up house and disturbing the bachelor habits of the males, while dreaming of Paris and being fascinated with the strange collection of Jules’ souvenirs from a lifetime of seafaring; and, to Juliette’s consternation, the cats invading the bridal bed!

It is not long before Jean has an outbreak of jealousy, when Juliette discovers the weird and wonderful train wreck that is Jules’ cabin. In a scene that is infused with a playful eroticism, Jules’ naked and tattooed upper torso jostles dangerously with Juliette’s playful fascination as they squeeze past one another over, under, and around the assorted bric-a-brac. Jules’ pinups of nude women a winking counterpoint to these less than innocent antics. Jean on coming upon the scene in his anger goes to smashing whatever of the detritus comes to hand.

When they reach the environs of Paris, Jules, in a sulk after the run-in with Jean, storms off in search of ‘doctoring’ by a lady of the night. With Jules AWOL, Jean must stay with the barge, so the couple are not able to explore Paris until evening, when Jules returns.  With Jules back on board, Jean and Juliette visit a cabaret near the wharf. There, an itinerant magician on a bicycle flirts brazenly with Juliette.  Jean’s jealousy is reignited and he peevishly decides to leave Paris that night. Juliette has other ideas and sneaks onto a tram headed for the centre of Paris.

A rift and extended separation follows, after Juliette is left stranded in Paris when Jean in another fit of peevishness he will regret, has the barge leave Paris without her. But true love eventually prevails with the two lovers reunited at the end in an emotional reunion and embrace. The reunion comes after Jules locates Juliette and returns her to the barge in an outrageous search and rescue operation.

The story is reverently portrayed through elegiac scenes of the working barge in mist, under clouds, in the early morning, and at night. Below deck the camaraderie and tensions arising from confinement are filmed in close-up and from overhead. There is a true intimacy as all four inhabitants – with all the ups and downs of barge life – settle down to a modus-vivendi sealed with affection and regard, but as with all lively souls, not without an inclination to melodramatic outbursts of jealousy and fickleness. A spice that none of them could live without, and which makes our journey as voyeurs so much richer and compelling.  We fall in love with these souls. They draw out our own longings and regrets, and we invest these lives with a veracity so bright that we don’t want the journey to end.

It is Vigo’s film, but his ownership is mortgaged to the stellar cast, the richness of Boris Kaufman’s cinematography, and the playful melodies of Maurice Jaubert’s cheeky score, resting as it does on the zestful wheezing of the piano accordian, that distinctly egalitarian instrument so loved by the French.

Vigo filmed during winter, so on location shooting was hostage to the weather, and on days of heavy fog some scenes were shot on a studio replica of the barge. The seamless photography and the editing never betray the artifice.  The location scenes have a cinema-verité, almost documentary, quality, which in deep focus records the barge’s journey to Paris.  A particular sequence when Jean and his crew manoeuvre the boat through a lock, is stunningly beautiful.

In this naturalistic tableau the charms of the principal players engage your emotions so completely that when there is a conflict or separation, you are more than anxious for a reconciliation, so they can continue the romance of their lives together.

Michel Simon as Jules is a joy with his comic antics having not only charm but a deep humanity.  Jean is played by Jean Dasté, the lead from Vigo’s earlier Zero de conduit, who perfectly portrays the conflicted young lover often stumbling while learning to balance the love for his new bride, his work, and the affection and regard of his crew. Dita Parlo as Juliette captures your heart.  Charming, cute as a button, and totally unaffected, she is the girl next door in all her innocence, decency, starry-eyed giggles, and petulant obstinacy. Vigo selected the inexperienced Louis Lefebvre to play the cabin boy for the very beguiling awkwardness that the young novice portrays. Gille Margaritis as the surreal magician during his scenes literally demolishes the scenery – even boldly ad-libbing satirical lyrics to a popular romantic song of the period about barge life.

The romance of Vigo’s L’Atalante in all its votive and lyrical charm takes you to a place you never want to leave. A romance of love and of life, a cinematic refuge from the dark absurdity of existence.

Zéro de Conduite: "Like a scattered student""

I would rather smell the way boys smell–
Oh those schoolboys the way their legs flap under the desks in study hall
That odour rising roses and ammonia
And way their dicks droop like lilacs
Or the way they smell that forbidden acrid smell

- Patti Smith, ‘Piss Factory’, 1974

Me? Looking like a scattered student
I follow exuberant girls through the green chestnuts:
They know I’m there, and turn towards me
Laughing, eyes brimming with indiscretion.
I don’t say a word: I just stare at the flesh

Of their white necks framed by tresses:
I follow the curve of their shoulders down
Their divine backs, hidden by bodices and flimsy finery.

Soon I’m ogling their boots and socks …
Burning with fever, yearning for flesh.
They think I’m silly. They whisper to each other …
-And I feel kisses blossom on my lips …

- Arthur Rimbaud, ‘TO MUSIC: Railway square, Charleville’, 1870

I hated high school.  Stupid regimentation and oppressive teachers.  Corporal punishment from self-righteous frauds.  Six cuts of the cane across the hand you didn’t write with.  Basher  would sneak up behind you in class and hit you hard on the head with the attendance book.  Heinrich  the crypto-fascist enforcer of discipline loved to shout and humiliate.  “Attention! At ease!”  We sotto voce: “Fuck you, Jack”. Prefects in blazers for black shirts.

No girls – just the odd female teacher – if she happened to be young fetishised to distraction. That fetid smell of grey flannel and ammonia.

The deputy-principal and principal, both Mr Brown’s and both balding old bastards – “Bing” and “Bong”. Bong never soiled his hands, while Bing had a cupboard full of canes: short ones, long ones, thin ones, thick ones. He climaxed each time he hit you – red-faced and on the edge of apoplexy – pausing on each stroke to catch his breath and force up your outstretched hand to inflict the maximum pain. Your hand throbbed for hours.  I wish I had had the gumption to climb onto the roof of that hell-hole and pelt those jailers with whatever came to hand.

The French film-maker Jean Vigo (1905-34) hated his boarding school and dreamed a wild dream of schoolboy revolution.  The son of a Catalan anarchist, and consumptive, he made only four films in his short life. While his last film, L’Atalante (1934), is his masterpiece, his first and third films À propos de Nice (About Nice 1930) and Zéro de conduite (Zero for Conduct 1933) are exhilarating forays into an artist’s discovery of cinema as personal expression, anarchic joyous experiments in which we enter the world of a magic lantern. A mosaic surprise of the potential of cinema to not only observe the concrete in new ways but to express our humanity, to wonder, to rebel, to satirise, and to laugh.

Zéro de conduite: young devils at school a 45 minute fiction talkie about boys at an elementary boarding school rebelling against the mindless discipline, is not only anarchic, but inspired comic lunacy from a fountainhead of deep love for childhood, and the joy of life lived with spontaneity and without pretence.

A new teacher points the way: he is indulgent and playful. He is awed by everything. In the playground he suddenly starts impersonating Chaplin’s tramp, then grabs a ball from the boys and runs. On an excursion into the town he leads the boys a merry chase after a young woman he fancies, and you see she is having as much fun as the audience.

In their dormitory a gang of agitators instigates a surreal pillow-fight and mock crucifixion – slowed down on the screen against the musical score played backwards.  Total chaos.  A lecherous teacher outed and the revolution begins: “You’re full of shit!” (Vigo’s father who died in prison in suspicious circumstances had changed his name to Miguel Almereyda - Alyamerda being an anagram of  ”y’a la merde”, literal translation “there’s the shit”.)

The rebels take to the roof on a civic occasion and pelt the literally stuffed shirts from the Board of Governors on the dais below with rubbish. The stern midget principal – played by a young boy affecting a manly voice and demeanor - with a beard nearly as long as he is short scurries away for shelter.

Surrealism as fun shot at all angles and in frenetic montage, with a liberating asynchronous score of unbridled vitality. Mad strategams, irreverent language, and kids sick of eating beans throwing them at each other.  Zero for conduct!

Jean Vigo: Joy is now

Jean Vigo (1905-34) was the son of a French anarchist and consumptive. He made only four films in his short life. His first and third films À propos de Nice (About Nice 1930) and Zéro de conduite (Zero for Conduct 1933) are exhilarating forays into an artist’s discovery of cinema as personal expression. These two films are anarchic joyous experiments in which we enter the world of a magic lantern. A mosaic surprise of the potential of cinema to not only observe the concrete in new ways but to express our humanity, to wonder, to rebel, and to laugh.

 

À propos de Nice

À propos de Nice is a silent 23 minute candid documentary study of the people of Nice at play. The bored stuffy bourgeoisie sunning at the beach are contrasted with the less privileged enjoying simple pleasures in the littered streets of the workers' suburbs. The joy of Carnivale and the angst of its aftermath are giant exotic paper-mache masks donned and then discarded, flowers lovingly thrown and then seen rotting on the empty road. Young women dance with abandon and uninhibited sensuality. Tall industrial chimneys billow smoke into the sky an uncanny premonition of the industrial stacks of Ozu's Tokyo Story. A chic young woman reclining on a cafe chair is cheekily undressed until she is naked, and a man sun-bathing turns black. Capricious satire and sweet melancholy. Working men laughing and kids playing on the streets. The camera swoops up and around at luxury hotels and cuts to the narrow alleys of teeming tenements. A true kaleidoscope... like life itself too short.

 

Zéro de conduite

Zéro de conduite a 43 minute fiction talkie of boys at an elementary boarding school rebelling at the mindless discipline, is not only anarchic, but inspired comic lunacy from a fountainhead of deep love for childhood, and the joy of life lived with spontaneity and without pretense. A new teacher points the way: he is indulgent and playful. He is awed by everything. In the playground he suddenly starts impersonating Chaplin's tramp, then grabs a ball from the boys and runs. On an excursion into the town he leads the boys a merry chase after a young woman he fancies, and while she runs you see she is having as much fun as we are in the audience. The rebels take to the roof on a civic occasion and pelt the literally stuffed shirts from the Board of Governors on the dais below with rubbish. The stern midget principal with a beard nearly as long as he is short scurries away for shelter. Surrealism as fun shot at all angles and in frenetic montage, with a liberating asynchronous score of unbridled vitality. Mad pillow fights, irreverent language, and kids sick of eating beans throwing them at each other... Zero for conduct!