Question: What filmmaker died at age 29
after making only one feature film – and did not even live to
see it edited and released properly – only to become one of the
world’s most influential directors?
Answer: French director Jean Vigo, whose lone feature is the
all-time classic, 1934’s "L’Atalante." BAMcinematek
will display Vigo’s enduring influence in its new series, "After
Vigo," which not only presents "L’Atalante" and
the director’s equally important featurette, "Zero for Conduct"
(1933), but also several films by directors who, for generations
after Vigo’s death, have been stimulated by his effortless melding
of gritty realism and flights of surrealist fancy: Elia Kazan,
Francois Truffaut, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ken Loach and Lindsay
Anderson, for starters.
During a career cut tragically short by an untimely fatal illness,
Vigo created some of the screen’s most memorable images: even
his short films, 1929’s "A propos de Nice" (a tribute
to the French resort city he adored) and 1930’s "Tatis"
(a documentary about the famous French swimming champion Jean
Tatis), contain many moments of poetic beauty. Unfortunately,
those shorts will not be seen as part of this retrospective,
which also marks the centenary of Vigo’s birth in April 1905.
But nothing Vigo had done prepared anyone for his next film,
the astonishing, 40-minute "Zero for Conduct" (showing
July 11, along with "The Columbia Revolt," a 1968 newsreel
collection of the student takeover of Columbia University). "Zero"
fashioned a still-spellbinding look at the boys of a rundown
boarding school and their eventual revolt against their teachers.
The movie is shot through with an almost punkish anarchy, but
Vigo also presents very sympathetic and honest portraits of the
students, and the result is a film that remains a potent, even
ageless symbol of anti-authoritarianism some seven decades after
its making.
But it’s 1934’s "L’Atalante" that forever made Vigo’s
reputation as one of cinema’s true giants. A simple story of
a newly married couple who honeymoon on the groom’s river barge,
"L’Atalante" is transformed into an almost unconscious
evocation of the simultaneous bliss and severe difficulties of
intense relationships.
Featuring an all-time great performance by Michel Simon as the
old barge-hand whose presence provokes a difficult test of wills
between the married couple, "L’Atalante" could be faulted
for lacking true cohesion in its narrative, but that’s mostly
due to the fact Vigo died before finishing the editing; over
the years, many versions of the film have been cobbled together,
probably none of them achieving close to what Vigo envisioned.
But so much of "L’Atalante" is so strikingly imaginative
and ultra-romantic – like the gorgeous nocturnal shot of the
bride in her white gown slowly walking on the barge as it quietly
glides through the water – that viewers are willingly transported
by this truly magical journey.
Of the many directors following Vigo who were transfixed by his
singular visionary style, Elia Kazan decided to start from the
top by starting to work with Vigo’s brilliant cinematographer,
Boris Kaufman. Kaufman won an Oscar for shooting Kazan’s 1954
Best Picture, "On the Waterfront," then returned to
photograph "Baby Doll" (1956) and "Splendor in
the Grass" (1961).
"Splendor" (showing July 6) was their first collaboration
in color, and also marked the debut of a young actor named Warren
Beatty.
Two films obviously influenced by "Zero for Conduct"
were Truffaut’s debut film, 1959’s darkly autobiographical "The
400 Blows" (showing July 14), which starred the young and
amazingly precocious actor Jean-Pierre Leaud; and Anderson’s
1968 "If " (showing July 12), with a pre-"Clockwork
Orange" Malcolm McDowell in the role of the prime instigator
in a rebellion in an all-boys school.
Ken Loach, who has since become one of the most authentic depictors
of working-class strife and social underdogs, directed "Kes"
(showing July 28) in 1969 – the story of a young boy who creates
his own reality by caring for a wild kestrel, "Kes"
is as indelible a portrait of alienated youth as "The 400
Blows" or "Zero for Conduct."
Other films in "After Vigo" also show the direct or
indirect influence of the master. Leos Carax’s 1991 "Lovers
on the Bridge" (July 26) unashamedly alludes to "L’Atalante,"
while Frederick Wiseman’s 1968 documentary "High School"
(showing July 18), whether consciously or not, draws parallels
to Vigo’s school-set "Conduct."
In its naïve idealism and intense political undertones,
Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1964 "Before the Revolution"
(showing July 7) could be seen as a distant cousin to Vigo’s
oeuvre. "Another Girl, Another Planet," the 1992 low-budgeter
by American indie Michael Almereyda (showing July 25), seems
to have been included solely because the director took his name
from Vigo’s father, Miguel Almereyda.
Finally, there’s "A Propos de Nice, la Suite" (showing
July 19), a 1995 omnibus tribute to Vigo’s short about the French
city, with episodes by such disparate admirers as Catherine Breillat,
Raoul Ruiz, Costa-Gavras, Claire Denis, Raymond Depardon, Abbas
Kiarostami and Pavel Lungin.
The "After Vigo" film series
runs July 5-28 at BAMcinematek, 30 Lafayette Ave. at Ashland
Place in Fort Greene. Tickets are $7-$10. For more information,
call (718) 636-4100 or log on to the Web site at www.bam.org.
