L´Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
This wonderful film about the love between two people is one of the greatest and most beautiful attempts in film history to depict the love between a man and a woman. It is the only feature length film Jean Vigo directed but he died soon after its release. Vigo´s legend lives with the film and it has its place on most all time greatest film lists, and rightly so.
L´Atalante deals with love and separation of a married couple in France, the boatsman Jean and his wife Juliette. They live on a barge sailing on river Seine where Juliette has no rest and longs for the city life on land. When she ventures into the parisian nightlife Jean leaves in a fit of rage, while boatsman Jules goes to look for Juliette. Jean, quickly overcome by grief and longing for his wife returns in hope to see his beloved again.
The relationship between the two lovers outlines the agony of seperation, as well as the euphoria of unity. Vigo potrays the genders as two distinctive poles with boatsman Jules, played by Michel Simon, in between. He is as much a man as a woman and as much an adult as a child. Simon steals the show and gives the film a strange feel with a mixture of song, bawdy humor and improvisational acting. Simon is generally thought of as one of France´s greatest (and most french) actors.
The film´s gloom along with its heavy eroticism had a great influence on the directors of the french new wave (Godard, Truffaut, Rivette). It is both a result of experimental films of the 20´s and a preliminary to realism in later films.
But above all the film is a strange and dazzling love story of two humans.