L'Atalante (1934)

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Jean Vigo had a short career, he made only 3 short films and one feature before he died of tuberculosis just a few months after finishing L'atalante.Jean Vigo got a great sense of humor throughout all of his films, this one is no different. it falls under the category Romance/Drama but i would add Comedy too.Jean Vigo's short films were all revolutionary for their own reasons, but instead of trying to revolutionize more i feel you aimed for quality. of cource it is also revolutionary since it is a very different love story, i am going to come back to that later.The film is a bit outdated (which is to be expected from a film from '34) for me that has nothing to say, but some people might feel that takes away some of the enjoyment, which is why i mentioned it.It's about a marriage who get's torn apart by nothing, by minor differences in personality. The newly married couple finds out that they are not able to live whit each other, but after being separated a couple of days they find out that they are not able to live without each other either.Jean is a serious, good, but boring man, throughout the film we see that Juliette finds the more special men more attractive even if being special is either a positive or negative thing.There is great imagery all the way through and the story is really original, no wonder it is frequently mentioned on top 10 best movies list Etc.9/10 Fantastic

If you have patience for a black and white foreign film that's seventy years old, that takes you to a world which no longer exists, a honeymoon on the Seine, the young couple attempting to find some romance amid quirky squalor, a sailor's world of work and drink, a place where a bride must learn to shift for herself when her husband fails to understand her need for a little magic, well-this is that film. An actor named Michel Simon essays an eccentric boatman who loves cats, keeps his perhaps-lovers severed hands in a jar, and who loves his old phonograph, steals much of the picture, but the cinematographer swipes even more, with moods of shadows and light hovering around some of the most erotic non-explicit lovemaking ever put on film. Director Vigo's longest film is a challenge to watch, but worth filing in your movie gems library. It is both groundbreaking and heart-warming, intelligent and experimental. L'Atlante is a classic that continues to earn it's status.

I don't remember when I saw this the first time but it left a magical impression.I was thrilled to find it again on TCM. I liked it but didn't love it this time around.Dita Parlo is interesting to watch...the scenes of her and her new husband coming back from the wedding are joyous. It is semi-interesting seeing her adjust to barge life, and the insidiously growing jealousy and brutality of the skipper. After a while you have to wonder what holds this odd couple together.After the blow-up, and "la patronne's" innocent whirl around Paris, you can see it's all about the sex. That's what keeps them together.Pere Jules is an interesting character and I enjoyed his acceptance of the "full-treatment" offer from that fortune teller.I had thought there was more to this. But what I got was OK.

I didn't realise that director Jean Vigo only made four films before dying at a young age, this film and Zero for Conduct are the two that appeared in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, so naturally I had to watch. Basically the L'Atalante is a canal barge, and the captain Jean (Jean Dasté) has married Juliette (Dita Parlo), despite not meeting much, and after a march they start their trip together. They are travelling between Le Havre and Paris on the barge with a cargo delivery, while on honeymoon, and there are tensions between the hardly used crew members. But the bigger conflict with tempers flaring and things smashed comes when Jean is jealous of Juliette having an affair with first mate and obsessive cat lover Père Jules (Michel Simon). Another argument and scuffle comes while in Paris and a Peddler (Gilles Margaritis) who wants to run off with Jean's wife, but having become tired of barge life she runs off anyway. Jean starts suffering near-catatonic depression having furiously left Juliette behind after casting off, and he tries a few things to try and get over it, but they do not work. Juliette meanwhile has found nothing but despair and crime since going onto the mainland, and it is only after Jean tries to kill himself jumping into the river that they are both reunited, and in the end they are happy once again together. I will be absolutely honest, and say that this explanation for what happens in the film is not something I would have recalled myself. Also starring Louis Lefebvre as Cabin Boy, Fanny Clar as Juliette's Mother, Raphaël Diligent as Raspoutine, Juliette's Father and René Blech as Best Man. I did not understand everything that was going on to be honest, but the relationship between the main characters was good, the realistic documentary style material for life on the barge is alright, and I can see that it did start influence the French New Wave of cinema, from what I did understand it is a most watchable romantic drama. Very good!