The Jean Vigo Movies Ranked
The untimely death of Jean Vigo looms large over his work. Facing critical and commercial difficulties with a share of controversy during the four years he made his four (mostly short) films from 1930 to 1934, the French director died in that latter year at age 29 from tuberculosis complications. The beauty and striking visual language Vigo employed has led many to lament this circumstance, wishfully thinking of what more he could have made. I second this notion, beside the general human instinct to regret the death of such a young person, but I’ve also found it difficult for me to emotionally engage with Vigo’s movies at the level they seem to compel others to do so. It’s not that they’re cold, precisely, but there is a kind of objective disconnect, in spite of the remarkably subjective cinematography constructed by, in all these cases, the great Boris Kaufman, brother of Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov. Nevertheless, there is no denying that Vigo’s films are sharp and often profoundly beautiful in sheer composition, which is of course is at play as a reason for the French New Wave rediscovering them and singing their praises. As it may be in any other case, it feels a bit strange to proclaim “The Jean Vigo Movies Ranked” to discuss a collection of such artful films, but this mechanism may allow me to wrestle with my vague “problems” with the filmmaker and expose his work to others.
#4 — JEAN TARIS, SWIMMING CHAMPION (1931)
A commissioned short documentary running nine minutes, JEAN TARIS, SWIMMING CHAMPION was ostensibly “just” meant to capture its titular French Olympian and his style and speed. And it does. But Vigo approaches the project with vigor, bringing in filmic language associated with the avant-garde by the end of the 1920s and at the start of the following decade. Close-ups, slow motion, and underwater photography (filmed through portholes set into an indoor pool) augment what is almost a throwback to the actualities of early cinema. TARIS documents pure movement, remarkable as part of the promotional narrative of this exceptional athlete but also as a “pure” attraction of a human body. Its “simplicity” can be regarded in the context of more established narrative forms, but as a demonstration of spectacle, it is somewhat mesmerizing. TARIS isn’t rich enough to stand higher among Vigo’s work, but as his “worst” film, it still enraptures.
#3 — ZERO FOR CONDUCT (1933)
In reflecting for this piece, I came to appreciate ZERO FOR CONDUCT more than I did upon first watch. The typical statement is that Vigo only made one feature, but by some traditional estimation, this 41-minute film is about the shortest feature one could make (40 is the cutoff). This length both helps and hurts ZERO FOR CONDUCT. On the one hand, its central premise of rebellious boarding school students is given enough concentrated attention. Even still, the pacing somehow feels off to me, as if there is an amorphous disconnect between certain scenes. My appreciation for movies is not based on “thrills per minute” or some kind of metric like that, but ZERO FOR CONDUCT does feel a bit lopsided in its construction. But then, that perhaps serves its story, which is radical in its critique of institutions. Correspondingly, the movie is strikingly shot and definitely illustrates Vigo’s narrative ambitions after the two-year gap since TARIS (the “longest” release hiatus in his brief yet relatively productive career). However, something about the adult characterizations especially of ZERO FOR CONDUCT make the film feel a bit “unserious” to me. I don’t mean that I want a dire mood, but the inflation of their personalities makes it harder for me to, again, engage emotionally. But I never was in a French boarding school in the 1930s, so things could really have been that ridiculous. Perhaps there’s another watch of ZERO FOR CONDUCT in my future because I think it’s a flawed but worthy installation of the “art films” of its era.
#2 — À PROPOS DE NICE (1930)
I suppose half of Vigo’s filmography is “documentary,” although both TARIS and his debut film, the short À PROPOS DE NICE, don’t fit what the modern viewer might expect of such a term. This silent 25-minute exploration of Nice, France doesn’t have an immediately distinguished narrative, and indeed, part of the thesis of the film seems to represent stream of consciousness through the lens of a “travelogue” movie. But Vigo draws out the real character of the city, or at least Vigo’s real perspective of it, which juxtaposes the celebratory grotesquerie of a carnival and partiers with the everyday lives of the lower classes. Capturing architecture and human faces and bodies with equal fascination, the director and his cinematographer, Kaufman, craft a whirlwind experience. À PROPOS DE NICE is full of dizzying images and stands as nearly Vigo’s purest work of visual expression.
#1 — L’ATALANTE (1934)
Vigo’s final work, his first and last “full-fledged” feature, is certainly his most lauded. L’ATALANTE is circled around in “greatest of all time” conversations and is the centerpiece of the French New Wave’s valorization of its maker. Perhaps I went in with too much of that expectation upon watching it the first time because that level of praise doesn’t match my experience with the film. This piece is not meant to be in a totally negative tone, but I do feel the need to qualify my still-complicated feelings for Vigo’s films, and not in a purely contrarian way. It’s true that L’ATALANTE is, once again, beautifully shot. Go figure, with Kaufman as cinematographer and I’m sure with Vigo as an eager fan of Soviet cinema, that many images frame the individual (or couple) against an expansive monochrome yet bright sky, with a stark horizon quite low in the frame. These shots serve to place L’ATALANTE’s characters, the central couple especially, in a vast universe, even as their circumstances feel very specific in the act of living on a canal barge and experiencing a new marriage. This technique and others, such as the chaotic composition to be found in a visit to a cafe/bar, serve to universalize the relationship and make its troubles appear “small,” especially once they are resolved. But the ache of the relationship and the humor of the first mate, played by the always superb Michel Simon in another deep dive into a role, seem to lack some urgency. L’ATALANTE’s leisurely pace holds some of its appeal but it also fails to draw out the characters’ interiority I desperately wanted more of. If I sound wishy-washy, it’s because I’ve been vacillating on my opinion on this film and Vigo’s others since I’ve seen each of them. There’s a poetry in them all, and in L’ATALANTE most compellingly, but the construction feels too calculated to be truly Romantic to me.
