L’Atalante

A harsh Winter: December 1933. A stubborn and ill filmmaker: Jean Vigo. An inexperienced and opinionated producer: Jacques Louis-Nounez. Two famous actors: Michel Simon, who had just broken through with  Jean de la Lune (1931) and Boudu Sauvé des Eaux (1932), and Dita Parlo, a Berlin star. A third protagonist, friend of Vigo and lead of his medium-length forbidden film Zéro de Conduite (1933), Jean Dasté. A minimalist script, simultaneously modest and violent: the wife of a sailor leaves him for a peddler.  An inspired cinematographer: Boris Kaufman. A talented musician: Maurice Jaubert. Finally, a legendary masterpiece: L’Atalante. This is where the film’s curse begins. October 5, 1934: Jean Vigo, exhausted from the shooting and suffering of septicemia, dies. He was 29 years old and all he saw from this film was its first rough draft.