Sight unseen.... the Blu-ray DVD has not yet been released. I have however seen all of these films, and own l'Atalante on DVD--which improved the quality of this very old movie. In Blu-ray it will probably be further improved, but I cannot speak to that.For me there is no movie more romantic and heartfelt than L'Atalante. It's story is simple enough, a young couple is married in a small town and then begins married life on Seine River barge heading for Paris. The deck hand is Michel Simon, (Boudu Saved From Drowning -Jean Renoir) in another funny role. They arrive in Paris, complications ensue... L'Atalante inspired the French New Wave, especially Francois Truffaut, Claude Lelouch and Jacques Rivette. It's one of the great treasures.
Zero de Conduite is about a rebellion in a boarding school and established that genre. Luis Bunuel's Los Olvidados and Truffaut's the 400 Blows, quote directly from it.
A Propos de Nice and Taris are a City Film and a study of a swimming champion. They will seem very dated, but if you love movies, city films-films about cities-are interesting, both historically, and for the film techniques they used. The qualities of these short movies led directly to Vigo being allowed to make his two feature films.
I can't say enough about Jean Vigo and especially L'Atalante and Zero de Conduit.
Thank you Criterion, for continuing to broaden and show appreciation for the medium of film. This was a great inclusion to your canon.Accessing Vigo's works has been a challenge until Criterion recently issued this 2 disc set. The image and sound quality has been restored as well as they can be.
Vigo may be obscure to many filmgoers, but his influence on cinema has been substantial since his untimely death at the age of 29. His total film output was under 2 hours, but what a 2 hours they are!
The extra features in the Criterion version put Vigo into context and help the viewer appreciate the conditions under which the films were made and the difficulties faced by the restorers.
Criterion does it again!"The Complete Jean Vigo," consists of three short, early silent works of the French filmmaker, "A propos de Nice,""Taris," and "Zero de conduite," along with "L'Atalante," (1930),thankfully a talkie, a romantic drama that is considered one of the lesser known glories of early French cinema, which is a shame, as it is a masterpiece.
"A propos de Nice" is a rhythmic view of life in that bustling tourist city; it occasionally rises to unexpected absurd heights. "Taris" is a portrait of a swimming champion. "Zero de conduite" is an inventive, charming tale of rebellious boarding school students, a topic on which Vigo can be presumed to know a lot: It has been endlessly influential to other film makers world wide over the years.
"L'Atalante"is in black and white, runs a tight 89 minutes, and is the greatest achievement of Vigo, a too-little known but greatly respected and influential film maker, who died of tuberculosis, shortly after its completion, at the shockingly young age of 29. The film is now generally available only on this disk that constitutes the entire oeuvre of the director's short, turbulent life.
Vigo's master work opens as Juliette, a young girl who has never set foot outside her village, marries Jean, mate on a French river barge named "L'Atalante," and sets up housekeeping aboard. Also aboard are a cabin boy, and the colorful old sailor Pere Jules, played by the inimitable Michel Simon (Port of Shadows (The Criterion Collection),The Train). When the barge reaches Paris, Juliette, who has never seen that great city, slips off to take a look at it. Jean awakes, discovers her gone, and leaves her to her own devices in the French capital. She knows no one there, has no money, does not know the city at all, and will have a very hard time there. But so will Jean, on his own again, until Pere Jules goes to find her.
But this simple, engaging plot isn't the reason the film is so loved. It was restored in 2001, making Boris Kaufman's brilliant cinematography and Maurice Jaubert's lovely score accessible again. The picture is legendary for its sheer, sparkling beauty: the waterways of France, and of Paris the movie was filmed in that city's "Bassin de la Villette, Paris 19"-among other locations, have never looked more evocatively beautiful. The characters are full-blown, their actions unpredictable, confusing, true to life. The film is wildly imaginative, inventive, surrealist, and has been compared to the daring early works of Vigo's contemporaries, the better known Jean Cocteau and Luis Bunuel. It remains fresh today, with scenes that still have the power to surprise and absorb us.
Vigo was the son of Miguel Almareyda, a notorious anarchist, who died mysteriously in jail when Vigo was 12. The young boy was always in poor health: he was abandoned by his mother and sent from boarding school to boarding school. Lucky for us, he took up film at age 23. Just because Vigo is little-known today, doesn't mean his work is not accessible. You want to see what we're all talking about.
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