abstract:L'Atalante (also released as Le Chaland qui passe) is a 1934 French film written and directed by Jean Vigo and starring Michel Simon, Dita Parlo and Jean Dasté. In the film Dasté plays a captain who honeymoons with his new wife, Parlo, on a canal barge with the ship's first mate Père Jules (Michel Simon) and the cabin boy (Louis Lefebvre).
New Yorker Video has given us a beautiful restoration of Jean Vigo's "L'Atalante " (1934), the only full-length feature by an influential artist who died, at 29, shortly after a butchered version of his film was released.
Now we can see what so many other filmmakers have seen (and discussed reverentially) in this poetic story of a young barge captain on the Seine -- "L'Atalante" is the name of his boat -- and the lovely young woman he marries and almost loses.