Newly married couple Juliette and a ship captain Jean struggle through marriage as they travel on the L'atalante along with the captain's first mate Le père Jules and a cabin boy.Newly married couple Juliette and a ship captain Jean struggle through marriage as they travel on the L'atalante along with the captain's first mate Le père Jules and a cabin boy.Newly married couple Juliette and a ship captain Jean struggle through marriage as they travel on the L'atalante along with the captain's first mate Le père Jules and a cabin boy.
- Awards
- 1 nomination
Raphaël Diligent
- Le trimardeur (tramp
- (as Rafa Diligent)
- …
René Blech
- Best Man at Wedding
- (uncredited)
Lou Bonin
- Passenger at Railway Station
- (uncredited)
Jacques B. Brunius
- Policeman with a Bicycle
- (uncredited)
Fanny Clair
- Juliette's Mother
- (uncredited)
Fanny Clar
- La mère de Juliette
- (uncredited)
Charles Dorat
- Thief
- (uncredited)
Paul Grimault
- Passenger at Railway Station
- (uncredited)
Genya Lozinska
- Fortune Teller
- (uncredited)
Gen Paul
- Master of Ceremonies at Wedding
- (uncredited)
Jacques Prévert
- Passenger at Railway Station
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- GoofsAfter jumping overboard and swimming, as Jean is climbing the rope up the side of the barge, he is (expectedly) dripping wet. The scene cuts and he is on board approaching Le père Jules and Le gosse from behind, and he has wet clothes, but no water dripping from them or his hair.
- Quotes
Le camelot (peddler): My dear friends, so kind of you to come. We were waiting for you before we served the biscuits dry as the duchess's pussy.
- Alternate versions1934-04-25 --- Jean Vigo's authorized cut before his death, at 89 min running time, shown to exhibitors and distributors mostly, at Palais Rochechouart, Paris, France. This version is lost.
- ConnectionsEdited into Cinéastes de notre temps: Jean Vigo (1964)
Featured review
Lovely sensibility. Pulled towards the center, transient feelings go and come back
Forget that this shows up in magazine polls as among the ten or twenty best ever, that might set it up as something it's not and then we should be able to know for ourselves about the things we watch, develop an eye that effortlessly knows each thing in itself.
Concessions about what it's not, I didn't know all this myself, so let me quote some trivia. It was made in less than ideal conditions, by a filmmaker whose health had taken a turn for the worse (the tuberculosis that would claim him soon after), money run out at some point and they had to improvise stretches. The finishing shots were picked up without Vigo and it was probably edited without him.
Much like studio abuse heaped on Welles, it opened in truncated form, with another title tacked on by producers, got a lukewarm response and wasn't going to be rediscovered until much later. The restored version comes to us from as late as the 90s; it's moot to say how authorial it is.
And then to say that, far from an ideal project for Vigo, something he conceived from the start, it was a script about romance on a barge that came his way after producers had balked on something else he wanted to make, political. I have Vigo in my mind as someone who was fervent, eager to shuffle things and challenge norms, but alas, he would be gone within a year. Had he really been allowed to flourish and we had the luxury of a dozen films to evaluate, we might be looking back at this as something else.
We still have all that he captured on his last turn, the lovely journey, and even better so far as knowing him, the vision.
The journey has something immensely affirming about it, in how a girl from a small village agrees to marriage with the young captain of a small barge, refusing to settle for the ordinary life; she simply leaps into the boat with one clean swoop and leaves for a journey of horizons.
And this is Vigo's own commitment. He enters a story that is not his and sails on a journey of horizons. This is all mirrored in the girl who is so eager to simply take everything in, eager to brush up against everything, fascinated, keen to know. She's a joy to watch.
The whole film unfolds as something from her own soul, which is Vigo's. Characters brush up against each other in close quarters. Rooms are always overflowing with stuff, everything feels heaped together. There's a roughneck sailor onboard who has been all over the world, embodying all of Vigo's eagerness to share, now stories about Shanghai, then dance and play the accordion.
Zero de Conduite opened with two kids sharing toys with each other on a train, trying to impress and amuse each other. This is about youths sharing themselves with each other on a boat that sails through drab France, trying to find out. There's a lot of hugging and fondling between them with a sense of complete delight at the touch.
And this is how Vigo creates. Instead of "scenes" with beginning and end that advance a plot, tentative exploration, our eye rummaging through stuff. It feels like early Cassavetes. He's trying to find out what comes out from hiding.
Heartbreak eventually. The boy has grown increasingly controlling, dismayed at her free spiritedness. She wants to see Paris, he won't let her. Watch it to the end, it's lovely. He has dived in the river, looking to see her. She has been wandering alone around Paris. A marvelous scene intercuts between the two alone in separate beds, yearning towards the camera like out of New Wave. So she listens to music that summons up the old storytelling sailor who takes her back to him.
God knows what we were deprived of, in my mind even greater works. But I can see why Tarkovsky loved this.
Concessions about what it's not, I didn't know all this myself, so let me quote some trivia. It was made in less than ideal conditions, by a filmmaker whose health had taken a turn for the worse (the tuberculosis that would claim him soon after), money run out at some point and they had to improvise stretches. The finishing shots were picked up without Vigo and it was probably edited without him.
Much like studio abuse heaped on Welles, it opened in truncated form, with another title tacked on by producers, got a lukewarm response and wasn't going to be rediscovered until much later. The restored version comes to us from as late as the 90s; it's moot to say how authorial it is.
And then to say that, far from an ideal project for Vigo, something he conceived from the start, it was a script about romance on a barge that came his way after producers had balked on something else he wanted to make, political. I have Vigo in my mind as someone who was fervent, eager to shuffle things and challenge norms, but alas, he would be gone within a year. Had he really been allowed to flourish and we had the luxury of a dozen films to evaluate, we might be looking back at this as something else.
We still have all that he captured on his last turn, the lovely journey, and even better so far as knowing him, the vision.
The journey has something immensely affirming about it, in how a girl from a small village agrees to marriage with the young captain of a small barge, refusing to settle for the ordinary life; she simply leaps into the boat with one clean swoop and leaves for a journey of horizons.
And this is Vigo's own commitment. He enters a story that is not his and sails on a journey of horizons. This is all mirrored in the girl who is so eager to simply take everything in, eager to brush up against everything, fascinated, keen to know. She's a joy to watch.
The whole film unfolds as something from her own soul, which is Vigo's. Characters brush up against each other in close quarters. Rooms are always overflowing with stuff, everything feels heaped together. There's a roughneck sailor onboard who has been all over the world, embodying all of Vigo's eagerness to share, now stories about Shanghai, then dance and play the accordion.
Zero de Conduite opened with two kids sharing toys with each other on a train, trying to impress and amuse each other. This is about youths sharing themselves with each other on a boat that sails through drab France, trying to find out. There's a lot of hugging and fondling between them with a sense of complete delight at the touch.
And this is how Vigo creates. Instead of "scenes" with beginning and end that advance a plot, tentative exploration, our eye rummaging through stuff. It feels like early Cassavetes. He's trying to find out what comes out from hiding.
Heartbreak eventually. The boy has grown increasingly controlling, dismayed at her free spiritedness. She wants to see Paris, he won't let her. Watch it to the end, it's lovely. He has dived in the river, looking to see her. She has been wandering alone around Paris. A marvelous scene intercuts between the two alone in separate beds, yearning towards the camera like out of New Wave. So she listens to music that summons up the old storytelling sailor who takes her back to him.
God knows what we were deprived of, in my mind even greater works. But I can see why Tarkovsky loved this.
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Languages
- Also known as
- Atalante
- Filming locations
- Bassin de la Villette, Paris 19, Paris, France(Lake crossed by the barge.)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross worldwide
- $9,505
- Runtime1 hour 29 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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