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Dir: Jean Vigo, 1934, France, 89 mins, French with English subtitles, Cert: PGSat 20 December // 16:30
Tickets: £5
"You'll see in every image, every frame, a transcendent love and passion of filmmaking itself" Martin Scorsese
Before it was hailed as a masterpiece that inspired the French New Wave, Wes Anderson, and countless others, Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante was a commercial and critical failure on release.
This lyrical, dreamlike film premiered in 1934 and the distributors panicked. They couldn’t understand its blend of earthy realism and sudden flights of fantasy. The film was butchered and renamed after a pop song, Le Chaland qui passe (“The Passing Barge”) as a crude marketing attempt. The retitled version was dismissed by critics and sank at the box office. Tragically, Jean Vigo, one of cinema’s greatest poets, died at just 29, without ever seeing his only feature-length work celebrated.
Thankfully the story didn’t end there. The original cut, thought lost forever, was recovered and painstakingly restored. What emerged in the 1990's was revelatory: a work of such tender sensuality and visual invention that it now sits comfortably among the greatest films ever made.
This poetic, tender, and slightly grubby portrait of newlywed life on a barge winding through France’s canals drifts between the mundane and the magical, A film of cats (so many cats), fog, laundry, and longing. Michel Simon’s turn as the tattooed first mate Père Jules is unforgettable, and the incredible underwater sequence remains one of cinema’s most swooningly romantic images.
Beautifully imperfect, spontaneous and astonishingly modern, L’Atalante is a true cinematic miracle and we are so delighted to screen this new 4k UK-wide release which will include a short video introduction from none other than Martin Scorsese!
★★★★★ “Utterly indescribable, partway between comedy and tragedy, romance and realism, film and dream. See it and swoon” Tom Huddleston, Time Out
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