L’Atalante (1934)

L'Atalante (1934)

L’Atalante (1934). 89 minutes. Directed by Jean Vigo. Starring Dita Parlo (as Juliette), Jean Dasté (as Jean), Michel Simon (as Père Jules), Gilles Margaritis (as peddler), Louis Lefebvre (as cabin boy), Maurice Gilles (as manager), and Raphaël Diligent (as Raspoutine).

L’Atalante’s 1962 appearance on Sight and Sound’s decennial poll of the ten greatest films of all time, alongside such classics as Citizen Kane (1941) and Battleship Potemkin (1925), solidified its status as a cineaste favorite and required arthouse fare. François Truffaut and others have advocated for its brilliance, lyricism, and admirable earthiness. Yet the film community’s insistence on L’Atalante’s greatness has distanced some modern critics from it, including David Kamp and Lawrence Levi, who fail to see profundity in its artful shots and poetic sequences. While it is not clear to me that it belongs alongside Kane or Potemkin, or that it outranks other French films of its era such as The Grand Illusion (1937), L’Atalante is nevertheless … Read the rest

Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)

Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932)

Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932). 84 minutes. Directed by Jean Renoir. Starring Michel Simon (as Boudu), Charles Granval (as Edouard Lestingois), Marcelle Hainia (as Emma Lestingois), Sévérine Lerczinska (as Anne Marie), Jean Gehret (as Vigour), Max Dalban (as Godin), and Jean Dasté (as student).

Pauline Kael famously described Boudu Saved from Drowning as the story of a proto-hippie whom a family of bourgeois benefactors attempts to reform. In many ways this description works. I can attest that Boudu (the proto-hippie) does bear the markers of the many individuals who continue to inhabit the counter-cultural margins of the Bay Area, where I live: a free and easy approach to sex (witness how he impulsively grabs and fondles the maid Anne Marie while he carries on an affair with the lady of the house), a lack of care for his personal appearance (the clothes full of holes and the unkempt beard and mustache), the periodic narcissism (the lack of interest in the … Read the rest