L'Atalante

L'Atalante
by Jean Vigo

L'Atalante

List Price: ~~$19.95~~
Category: VHS Video
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Product details

Actor: Dita Parlo, Gilles Margaritis, Jean Dast?, Louis Lefebvre, Michel Simon
Director: Jean Vigo
Cinematographer: Boris Kaufman
Cinematographer: Jean-Paul Alphen
Cinematographer: Louis Berger
Writer: Jean Vigo
Producer: Jacques-Louis Nounez
Writer: Albert Ri?ra
Writer: Jean Guin?e
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: French (Original Language), Analog
Format: Black & White, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Subtitled
Running Time: 89 minutes
Release Date: 1998-11-11
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: New Yorker Video
Studio: New Yorker Video

VHS Movie Reviews of L'Atalante

Movie Review: Jean Vigo: master of masters!
Summary: 5 Stars

L' Atalante (1934), name of the mythical Goddess, specialist in getting away of men, means for Truffaut, one of his ten preferred ones. Its unlucky story has known multiple obstacles, beginning with the death of Jean Vigo, once the footage was over, the changes made by its producers as well as the successive restorations, being the last one in 1990, that carved in relief a violent film, tormented, fevered, filled of ideas and fantasy, featured by an exacerbated romanticism, almost devilish but profoundly human.

Very few films have been able to depict with such poetry and conviction, the quotidian details, images hovered by an enraptured lyricism, in that hard to achieve dimension in which the real and the imaginary are blended with mesmerizing results.

Extraordinary and majestic film.

Movie Review: five stars for everyone involved
Summary: 5 Stars

Suberb cinematography, direction, acting, etc. Visually, an absolutely georgeous film. Photographed by the same cameraman who emigrated to Hollywood and did On the Waterfront. Great writing and directing. Not a single wasted moment. The acting is everything you could ask for; it's thoroughly "modern." The sound is beautifully integrated into the film, especially for such an early effort in the sound era. And it contains one of the great cinema "sex scenes" of all time...particularly since the male and female leads are miles apart as it takes place! I had been unaccountably unaware of this film until recently....its now one of my top 10 favorite films of all times and places.

Movie Review: Excellent but too hard a hype to live up to
Summary: 5 Stars

I waited until I watched this movie a second time before I decided to review it. I had bought the movie because it was listed on "Sight and Sound's" all-time top ten best movie lists. I realized (after watching it the first time) that I had just seen an excellent movie but not one of the greatest movies of all time. I gave it a lot of thought and just let it go. Several years later, I put my movie up for sale on Amazon.com and it went quickly. I decided to watch it one last time before I shipped it off the next day and I enjoyed it again. However, as beautiful a story as it truly is, this is NOT one of the greatest movies of all time.

This is the story of young love (i.e.: innocence). We start with a wedding of barge captain and small-town girl. Everybody follows the couple to the barge expecting a reception of some sort. However, the captain merely signals that it is time to shove off and the wedding guest stand there puzzled with the abrupt end of the celebration. This and many other scenes really do tell an intimate story and it is the sum total of all of these intimate glimpses that have given the movie its' fame. The love story reaches out to us and we smile at times and shudder at other times when the newly weds make the newlywed mistakes. The development of trust and understanding, the assertion of who's boss, the realization that being right is no fun if it means being alone, etc, etc, all come together in a beautiful movie. BUT it's still not one of the greatest movies of all time!!!

My problem was in anticipating something greater than I got. It wasn't the first time nor will it be the last. However, maybe my efforts to tone down the praise will give others a chance to watch it without expectations. I'm sure my review would have been a lot different had I been able to see "L'Atalante" that way.

Movie Review: L'Atalante
Summary: 5 Stars

A sublime melding of the real and surreal, the deceptively simple plot of Jean Vigo's "L'Atalante" is part of its lasting appeal. Life on water is Eden, life on land, temptation, and we instinctively want the sanctity of Jean and Juliette's love upheld. An acknowledged masterpiece, "L'Atalante" still floats gracefully, with actor Michel Simon stealing the picture as Pere Jules, the barge's eccentric, cantankerous first-mate. Sadly, this was the gifted Vigo's only full-length feature; he died shortly after its release, at age 29.

Movie Review: a cruddy print
Summary: 5 Stars

Well, I'm halfway decent at French, so when I buy big French classics like this the first thing I take a gander at is the subtitle situation. Here, only English is possible, not French or any other language. There are also no dubs into other languages.

Fortunately, however, while the letters of the subtitles are white, the letters sport tiny black borders, allowing them to remain legible even when they appear against a whitish backdrop, such as snow or a bridal dress.

Why doesn't everybody just make yellow subtitles? Sheesh!

Anyhow. The extras are lame: you get to see a gallery of posters for the film and a bevy of still shots.

In short, what you're gettng is essentially the movie in DVD format, but nothing more worth mentioning. Don't be led into thinking this is a revolutionary transfer or anything. I can't see how anyone could feel that way.

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Summary of L'Atalante

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

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