As the congregants of a wedding walk to the riverside, accompanying newlyweds leaving by barge, a woman exclaims, “couldn’t she marry a local boy?” to which another quickly responds that “she always has to be different.” But the poignant difference is to be one of love. The marriage of Jean to Juliette, irrelevant to the world at large, is an event of gravity and import indicating not only the upset of the village, but the headlong passions of a couple overturning their lives to accommodate them.
Walking solemnly from a church resounding with the peals of matrimonial grace, the couple moves through the byways of a small, riverside village in 1930s France; behind them process the congregants of the wedding that has finished with levity and hope–all that a couple can expect of their future. The captain of a peculiar and proud barge awaiting them at the wharf, Jean walks with steady grace, his posture erect, his arm linked through that of his bride, who despite the gravity of the occasion tries to suppress her lightheartedness and maintain the composure of her new felicity.
So begins the adventure of the couple, Jean and Juliette, embarking on L’Atalante with Jean’s crew of three, of which he is the captain. There awaits at the wharf the crusty Père Jules, as well as the cabin boy Le Gosse, both of whom fête the newlyweds with a bouquet and an accordion. Floundering and giving way to the raucous tumult of the seaman’s life, their greetings turn into bickering, this haphazard and boyish failure foreshadowing the trials that are to threaten the new couple.
Directed by Jean Vigo, L’Atalante first creates an immersive quaintness pervading its setting of a barge, and as the story develops, this quaintness becomes the endearing watchword of what is unique as a setting, and moving as a portrait of character. The virtues and pleasures of the film contribute to its status as a timeless classic of the early cinema of sound.
The quaintness derives from the characters, the foremost of whom, Père Jules, is endearing because of his earthy antics and general mania. Bumbling, with a barnacle as a face, Père Jules in one scene engages Juliette (whom he calls “the missus”) in dance below deck; he later introduces her to the many gewgaws and the stories of how he acquired them. His mercurial bluster infuses the barge with comedy and lightness, counterbalancing what is somber and searching in the central couple.
Stealing the horn of a gramophone from a barroom during an evening in Paris, having dabbled in fleshly pleasures, the crusty rapscallion brings it back to the barge and, establishing it in his ramshackle cabin, he get it to function. The delight of the scene following is one of the many quaint, peculiar moments that are scintillating, affirmative of the cinema’s power, manifesting visions of intimate humanity that would otherwise remain obscure.
The cinematography of the film, by Boris Kaufman, also captures the wonderful and peculiar quaintness drawing in the eye. The background of the river, and often the skyline, counterpoise the warren of the barge cabins, which are shot from myriad angles of an impressive range. The viewer glimpses parts of a brief meal in a high-angle shot, and later, as the camera tracks into Jules’ cabin, taking advantage of the angularity afforded by the many curios and objects scattering the room, the shots become dynamic and surprising: as Juliette searches for balm with which to soothe a wound on Jules’ hand, she moves one panel of a cabinet in which the camera, awaiting, leaves the viewer privy to the gruesome surprise she will soon encounter.
The dynamic camerawork enlivens and enlarges the confines of the barge, of which Peter Bradshaw writes that it is “somehow both cramped and yet as unexpectedly capacious as a haunted house.”[1] This indefinite fascination contributes to the experience of the film, eliciting emotions that alternate between bewitchment and wry ticklish pleasure.
The ambience of the riverside and the wintry light make up the film’s visual marvels. Expanses of sunlight, revealed by various low-angle shots, provide the totality a day as the camera tracks over the river and the barge, proportioning the tiny characters of the story. In one instance of this ambience, during a riverside long shot encompassing both barge and river, Juliette totters atop the barge in her wedding apparel against a background of distant billows, ships and cargo traversing the waterway. The camera miniaturizes Juliette, set against the turmoil of her life.
Whether love can endure the lifestyle of a contemporary seaman, the strains of intimacy threatening the couple’s well-being, make up the backbone of the story. The story benefits more from whimsy than from any traditional plot, in support of which Roger Ebert writes that “the movie’s effect comes through the way it evokes specific moments in the life of the young couple, rather than tying them to a plot.”[2]
Jean and Juliette are given to marital joie of vivre, living with exuberance and playful lightness that both enliven and disgruntle Père Jules, who must suffer their newlywed tumult. The contention and strains arise thereafter: Juliette laments the state of the laundry, vowing to wash it; Père Jules’ cats, when not breeding in her bedspread, are often nettling; exerting himself at the helm, Jean has to disturb their nightly hours, and she bemoans his job one morning, saying, “it’s like this every night.” Jean also discovers that she is straying, finding her in the cabin of Père Jules, innocently entangled, and he thrashes about with vindictive fury. Their problems continue to grow and Paris is to test their relationship: Juliette sneaks away to the city, and Jean, wary of her loyalty, commits an error that he later regrets.
The levity of the movie, its peculiar quaintness, ingenious camerawork, and dynamic beauty enhance the context of the central relationship, never departing from a fidelity to the story and its characters. The world is their antagonist, for as Robert Abele writes, “the world, in its wonder and cruelty, is both for and against lovers, often dizzyingly so.”[3] The deepening of their love attests to the optimism of Jean Vigo, who combines a hymn to romantic loyalties with a passionate conviction of the fallibility of human nature. The result is an artistry with which the film, “so fully alive to the world’s possibilities that magic and reality seem to function as opposite sides of the same coin,”[4] created in 1934 during the early years of the cinema of sound, continues to outmatch the most comprehensive of analyses and earn every repeated screening.
- Peter Bradshaw. “L’Atalante—Review,” theguardian.com, January 19 2012 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jan/19/l-atalante-review ↑
- Roger Ebert. “L’Atalante,” rogerebert.com, October 15 2000, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-latalante-1934 ↑
- Robert Abele. “Review,” latimes.com, October 4 2018, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-l-atalante-review-20181004-story.html ↑
- Jonathan Rosenbaum. “L’Atalante,” chicagoreader.com, December 31 2018 (accessed), https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/latalante/Film?oid=1062178 ↑
