L'Atalante (1934 Jean Vigo)

Newly-weds Dita Parlo and Jean Dasté honeymoon on a barge with colourful Michel Simon and the boy Louis Lefebre. They make love, split up, and are reunited. Actors are infectious. Striking photography from Boris Kaufman (and Louis Berger and Jean-Paul Alphen).

Vigo died of tuberculosis after filming, aged 29. 'Only a few days after the first disappointing run ended, Vigo died. His much-loved wife Lydou, lying beside him, got up from the bed and ran down a long corridor to a room at the end of it. Friends caught her as she was about to jump out of the window'* - and that could be a scene from the film, which leaves us with striking scenes underwater and of a marionette, and a persistent and annoying junk pedlar and a gramophone and cats and the city... and ends on a terrific aerial shot of the barge, the 'L'Atalante' of the title.

When you see it it doesn't seem so much, somehow, but its effect is deeper than it seems. Written by Vigo, Albert Riéra and Jean Guinée.

*(Excerpt from Derek Malcolm's 'A Century of Films' (2000)).

Cahiers du Cinema published a Top 100 in 2008. This was number five.