Description
Even among cinema’s legends, Jean Vigo stands apart. 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 Buńuel, Vigo’s films refused to play by the rules. This set includes all of Vigo’s titles: Ŕ propos de Nice, an absurdist, rhythmic slice of life from the bustling coastal city; 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 L’Atalante, widely regarded as one of cinema’s finest achievements, about newlyweds beginning their life together on a canal barge. These are the witty, visually adventurous works of a pivotal film artist.
Collection Includes
Ŕ propos de Nice
Jean Vigo was twenty-five when he made this, his debut film, a silent cinematic poem that reveals, through a thrilling and ironic use of montage, the economic reality hidden behind the facade of the Mediterranean resort town of Nice.
Zéro de conduite
So effervescent and charming that one can easily forget its importance in film history, Jean Vigo’s enormously influential portrait of prankish boarding-school students is one of cinema’s great acts of rebellion.
L’Atalante
In Jean Vigo’s hands, an unassuming tale of conjugal love becomes an achingly romantic reverie of desire and hope.
Special Features:
- New high-definition digital restorations of all four of Jean Vigo's films
- Audio commentaries featuring Michael Temple, author of Jean Vigo
- Score for A propos de Nice by Marc Perrone, from 2001
- Alternate edits from A propos de Nice, featuring footage cut by Vigo
- New and improved English subtitle translations
- Episode of the French television series Chineastes de notre temps about Vigo, from 1964
- Conversation from 1968 between filmmakers Francois Truffaut and Eric Rohmer on L'Atalante
- Animated tribute to Vigo by filmmakers Francois Truffaut and Eric Rohmer on L'Atalante
- Animated tribute to Vigo by filmmaker Michel Gondry
- Les voyage de "L'Atalante," film restorer and historian Bernard Eisenschitz's 2001 documentary tracing the history of the film
- Video interview from 2001 with director Otar losseliani on Vigo
- A booklet featuring essays by critics Michael Almereyda, Robert Polito, B., Kite, and Luc Sante