L' Atalante

Jean, the young captain of the barge L'ATALANTE, marries Juliette, a village girl who has never left home before. They sail away together along with a cabin boy and the colorful sailor Pere Jules, played by Michel Simon - in a legendary, uproarious and unpredictable performance forming the very heart of Vigo's magical, anarchic universe. Becoming bored, Juliette slips off the ship to discover the delights of Paris- forcing Jean into heartbreak.

Restored in 2001, this version of the film aims to be as faithful to the original as possible. Viewers can once again enjoy the luminous beauty of Boris Kaufman's evocative cinematography and the marvelous music of Maurice Jaubert in Jean Vigo's triumphant masterpiece as it was meant to be seen.

The story is so simple, it hardly exists: a young girl marries a mate aboard a river barge named L'Atalante; she grows bored and frustrated with the dull life that results; when the barge docks in Paris, she runs away, only to discover that she misses her husband. But the power of L'Atalante isn't in its story--it's in the way the camera captures the world in rich, dreamy images, steeping the audience in a viewpoint both innocent and stark. The simplest things are also implacable and confusing. The characters' personalities, and the ways they conflict, have the deep frustrations of real life, and not the easily resolved plot points of most romances. The culmination will leave you aching with happiness and lingering sorrow. Director Jean Vigo--who died of lung disease after completing the film--had an astonishing ability to make the real world translucent; cinematographer Boris Kaufman said, "He used everything around him: the sun, the moon, snow, night. Instead of fighting unfavorable conditions, he made them play a part." This film is a masterpiece, comparable to Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali or the movies of Robert Bresson in its ability to be simultaneously effortless and devastatingly complex. --Bret Fetzer