MOVIE REVIEW : A Pristine Print of ‘L’Atalante’

Even though Jean Vigo’s legendary 1934 “L’Atalante” (at the Nuart through Jan. 25) has been available only in a mutilated version for a half-century, it has spent that time on the top 10 lists of many of the world’s film critics. Now, thanks to the recent discovery of a never-shown print in the British Film Institute Archive and the efforts of restorers Pierre Philippe and Jean-Louis Bompoint, it comes to us not only in pristine shape, but with a bonus--10 minutes of footage that were not in the previous version.

The problems for “L’Atalante” began with the fact that the 29-year-old Vigo was dying of leukemia during the production and was too ill to make his own final cut.

Today, it is hard to see why “L’Atalante” was so ill-fated, but apparently Vigo’s experimental style, which remains fresh and whimsical, was too sophisticated and therefore off-putting for 1934 audiences. Its story is simple enough: a handsome barge captain (Jean Daste) takes a pretty bride (Dita Parlo), who, her mother remarks, has never before left her native village. Although the couple are passionately in love, they find it hard to cope with married life.

What lifts the film above ordinary screen romance is the lyrical expressiveness and the mature perspective of Vigo and his cinematographer Boris Kaufman (who went on to become one of Hollywood’s most distinguished cameramen). The way in which the film’s story is told is in itself a joy, not because Vigo and Kaufman go for flashy techniques but rather that there was an infallible sense of rightness in their choices.

As a result, the story of the barge captain and his bride becomes that of every young couple faced with its first marital crisis.

The other crucial aspect of the film’s grandeur of spirit is the looming presence of the great Michel Simon as the barge’s first mate, an unwashed eccentric, a collector of the fanciful who alternately intrigues and repels the bride and whose presence is ambiguous in the utmost. Among the cuts restored is a comical sequence in which Simon’s interminable demonstration of Greco-Roman wrestling is amusingly speeded-up via superimposed dissolves. Vigo also makes effective use of superimposed dissolves in conveying the sexual yearnings of the the couple as they sleep. The film’s quaint and earthy authentic dockside locales and Maurice Jaubert’s infectious music and songs complete the enchantment of “L’Atalante.”