The Complete Jean Vigo



Even among cinema’s greatest legends, Jean Vigo stands alone. The son of a notorious anarchist, Vigo had a brief but brilliant career making poetic, lightly surrealist films before his life was cut tragically short by tuberculosis at age twenty-nine. Like the daring early works of his contemporaries Jean Cocteau and Luis Buñuel, Vigo’s films refused to play by the rules. This set includes all of Vigo’s titles: À propos de Nice, an absurdist, rhythmic slice of life from the bustling coastal city of the title; Taris, an inventive short portrait of a swimming champion; Zéro de conduite, a radical, delightful tale of boarding-school rebellion that has influenced countless filmmakers; and, of course, L’Atalante, widely regarded as one of cinema’s finest achievements, about newlyweds beginning their life together on a canal barge. These are the endlessly witty, visually adventurous works of a pivotal film artist.

DISC FEATURES

- New high-definition digital restorations of all of Jean Vigo’s films: À propos de Nice, Taris, Zéro de conduite, and L’Atalante (with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray edition)
- Audio commentaries featuring Michael Temple, author of Jean Vigo
- Alternate shots from À propos de Nice, featuring footage Vigo cut from the film
- Animated tribute to Vigo by filmmaker Michel Gondry
- Ninety-minute 1964 episode of the French television series Cinéastes de notre temps on Vigo, directed by Jacques Rozier
- Conversation from 1968 between filmmakers François Truffaut and Eric Rohmer on L’Atalante
- Les voyages de “L’Atalante,” Bernard Eisenschitz’s 2001 documentary tracking the history of the film
- Video interview from 2007 with director Otar Iosseliani on Vigo
- New and improved English subtitle translations
- PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by film writers Michael Almereyda, Robert Polito, B. Kite, and Luc Sante

DVD
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Blu-ray
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Nice. All the features are transfered over from the French/UK DVD set, plus a lot more. Looks like I'll be upgrading to the BD for this one, and completely worth it.

This really does look marvellously comprehensive, rendering the previously essential Artificial Eye set obsolete at a stroke.

I'm still in awe that this is being released (at that price point!!), not least because I don't have a region-free player. As pointed out, a wealth of material to absorb. August had better hurry itself up.

Is this the first time a whole episode of Cinéastes de notre temps has been included on a Criterion disc? Nice to see that.

No, look to Imamura.

I'm really looking forward to owning "L'Atalante" on Blu-ray. Who would have thought that we'll get "People on Sunday" and "L'Atalante" on Blu-ray in the same year (knocking two films off my most wanted Blu-ray list)? Nice going, Criterion! How about releasing "Partie de Campagne" on Blu-ray, too? This or next year perhaps?

Others are probably thinking it but I'll just come out and say it: release of the year. I just wish it were coming out a month earlier so I could see all these in HD before finalizing my 1930s list.

The cover's growing on me.

Surely I cannot be the only one who ran through the AE Vigo set, shrugged their shoulders, and moved on with their life? Am I even allowed to say that Vigo does nothing for me without being placed on some sort of Cinemaphile Probation?

No I agree. Outside of Propos I'm not overly fond of him to be honest. If it were more packed I'd likely be getting Cul-de-Sac instead (it's worse than the Vigo's but oh so weird).

This is shared with the AE Vigo set, which includes the full CdeNT film plus the outtakes of A PROPOS... Shall be interested to see how the transfers of the main features/shorts compare...

Probation, definitely.

But in all seriousness, L'Atalante was a bit of a let-down for me. I think Vigo's much more interesting for what he did with the medium than L'Atalante is to watch. Zero is about the right length for his style of filmmaking, on the other hand, and while I haven't seen it in over a decade, I have fond memories of it. The other two I've never seen.

The main meat from the AE/Gaumont is on the Criterion but there are a couple of truffles missing. Manuel de Oliveira's piece, Nice a propos. Letters read by Mathieu Almaric. Marc Perrone in concert and numerous photos and poster art. Surprisingly seemingly missing are the pieces by Lindsay Anderson and Bertolucci that you would have thought would be a must given the re-release of 'If'. Also the Gaumont artwork is very nice with original poster work on the inside cover and a well made MoC standard booklet. The biggest bonus in terms of a double or even treble dip is the Blu as Gaumont have no plans to upscale.

Count me among those who prefer the shorts to L'Atalante and admire the film more than love it. Perhaps seeing L'Atalante in HD will make a difference (wouldn't be the first time I found a viewing experience more immersive).

I fell for L'ATALANTE in 1989, seeing it on the big screen following the major resto then, and never really shifted my position, part of its fascination lies in its unclassifiability... A companion to this set is the Lorrimer book (pub.1983, now OOP) "The Complete Jean Vigo", which contains the scripts and other writings by Vigo relating to all the films...

L'Atalante just sends me... lord just the sound of the score-- hell even the thought of it-- sees me levitate.

There's a silliness and a gloominess about the film that is just utterly unique; the silliness of the sense of humor, typified of course by Michel Simon's Pere Jules. From the moment following the wedding when he minces absurdly (running like his feet were tied together with short strings) back to the holy water at the church and with a look on his face like he was about to bust out laughing making the sign of the cross (and "God's deserted us," back on the barge a moment later), the film is filled with a sense of a long running inside joke between he and Vigo. Almost as though the two of them were laughing their way straight thru the film because of the stuff they were putting into it... almost like the silly atmosphere on the old days of the Stern show where Howard Jackie and Fred can barely keep together because of how funny they know the show is and what they're getting away with, a la one of the better Richard Simmons appearances.

I mean the film just had me in tears of hysterics, i e when Jules is going bananas with Parlo's dress while she's trying to pin it, asking Daste over and over and over again if he's going fishing (after jumping in the water looking for his wife). The thief cornered at the train station yelping and whimpering and jumping around like a spastic dog on methamphetamine. The performer at the little cafe (The Poultry Is Inside).

Meanwhile wrapping around all this absurdity is a cloudy, rusty, gloomy, yet sensual atmospheric, thick with fog and a heavy sense of the long ago and far away that for me is just absolutely seductive. When Parlo & Daste are separated from each other but simultaneously longing to jump each other's bones signified by these wonderful superimpositions over one another passing their hands over their own bodies, intercut with the two of them swimming in the canal. . . christ it's just sublime stuff.

Vaguely conjures a feeling not too dissimiliar to Rimbaud, another young poet with a very limited output who merges the intensely beautiful with the out-to-lunch.

I love all of Vigo-- the canon is an endlessly rewatchable series of confections that I periodically go back to to get refreshed by. The late twenties and early thirties were such a magical time in Paris-- Kirsanoff, Vigo, Gremillon, Epstein, Dreyer, Renoir, Cocteau just wonderful stuff. One could go on and on with the names.

I personally thought that the separated/longing superimpositions were over the top and awkwardly done. I was in stitches when Annette Insdorf in the video interview on the New Yorker disc said something to the effect that it was the most erotic scene ever filmed.

The film definitely does have some incredibly touching moments, but I don't really consider that one of them.

Re. the swimming sequence in L'ATALANTE, it's fascinating to compare the techniques Vigo used in TARIS to those used dramatically here...

Which reminds me: isn't it a good time now to get your exclusive audiocommentary out to us? I really appreciated your take on "Menilmontant", btw, belated thanks for that.

They have to reinsert the ice shot and the wrestling superimpositions!

Time to get rid of my New Yorker L'Atalante disc?

Don't think that will happen, as these bits were included in an earlier resto (1990), which has for some reasons been "disregarded" by the Gaumont people...

I'm firmly in the pro-L'Atalante camp (and agree 100% with everything Schreck says), but I've only ever seen it in 35mm - and the comments above suggest that this makes a significant difference.

Yes I was very pleased to recently get a DVDR from a friend of that older resto so I can have that excised footage (plus the different song at the end) for my own personal archive.

L'Atalante is just magnificent.


I don't know if the scene (of sexual longing) is touching per se, (aside from what the actors are doing to themselves), but beautifully done and erotic I'd say it certainly is.

Ditto, and I'd been (probably obnoxiously) assuming that the nay-sayers must have missed the 35mm revival when it was circulating in the late 80s / early 90s. It's such a vital film, and like Zero de conduite it's 'moving', but in completely unexpected ways. They're films that love to trip you up by mixing registers and taking your breath away with moments that could be quirkily idiosyncratic, earnestly documentary or wildly poetic, sometimes rammed up alongside each other. For some reason that diversity works beautifully on the big screen, where even the most casual and intimate moment is made monumental and equated with the passages of sweeping impressionism. As Leos Carax recognized, what Vigo manages to do here is fashion a modern romantic myth out of a very eccentric bag of odds and ends, without flattening out the eccentricity.