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The Complete Jean Vigo (A propos de Nice / Taris / Zero de conduite / L'atalante) (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

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Sight unseen.... the Blu-ray DVD has not yet been released. I have however seen all of these films, and own l'Atalante on DVD--which improved the quality of this very old movie. In Blu-ray it will probably be further improved, but I cannot speak to that.
For me there is no movie more romantic and heartfelt than L'Atalante. It's story is simple enough, a young couple is married in a small town and then begins married life on Seine River barge heading for Paris. The deck hand is Michel Simon, (Boudu Saved From Drowning -Jean Renoir) in another funny role. They arrive in Paris, complications ensue... L'Atalante inspired the French New Wave, especially Francois Truffaut, Claude Lelouch and Jacques Rivette. It's one of the great treasures.

Zero de Conduite - is about a rebellion in a boarding school and established that genre. Luis Bunuel's Los Olvidados and Truffaut's the 400 Blows, quote directly from it.

A Propos de Nice and Taris are a City Film and a study of a swimming champion. They will seem very dated, but if you love movies, city films-films about cities-are interesting, both historically, and for the film techniques they used. The qualities of these short movies led directly to Vigo being allowed to make his two feature films.

I can't say enough about Jean Vigo and especially L'Atalante and Zero de Conduit.

Jean Vigo is one of the best directors you might not have heard of until recently. This set completely does his work justice. I have the dvd version, and the transfers are absolutely gorgeous. There are informative commentaries, in depth episodes, an interview with Truffaut and Rohmer about the man and his work (and the short amount of time he had to do it), and a neat little tribute from the director Michael Gondry. This set is essential to any lover of cinema, and its storied beginnings. Get it.

Comparing the Blu-ray of L'Atalante w/The New Yorker dvd, I was a bit disappointed. The source print was never pristine and while the image is tidied up in some places, there is not a huge improvement from the dvd. It's not a jaw-dropping improvement like Criterion's ultra-silvery Blu-ray of Fritz Lang's M. However, everyone who has seen any iteration of L'Atalante knows that it is a wonderful, poetic movie, endlessly watchable, while "M" is a superior print of a just-ok movie. The print of Apropos de Nice, Vigo's impressionistic view of that city, is immaculate, and more solidly Blu-ray-ish.

L'Atalante is certainly a top 10 or top 20 film of all time. The opening 10 minutes and the late scene when the couple is separated and lie in different beds longing for each other, can make viewers swoon. But for me there is too much of Michel Simon, a 1930s star whose gruff buffoonery is allowed to overwhelm the narrative. A little bit of him goes a long way. You may remember Michael J. Pollard in a supporting role in Bonnie & Clyde. If he had more screen time, it would have wrecked Arthur Penn's movie. Simon doesn't wreck L'Atalante, but he wears out his welcome long before the end.

The booklet essays are only moderately insightful & sometimes pretentious.

While I respect the comments of the 3 previous posters, there is no indication that any of them purchased the Blu-ray, & at least one was posted before the Blu-ray was released. If you look at the comments on Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, Amazon bunches the dvd & Blu-ray comments together, so you have no idea if reviewers have seen the Blu-ray or are just commenting on their 40 year old memories.

The Criterion Collection is a beacon of light for film aficionados. For those of you who are not familiar with his work, I do not want to influence your experience. Have your own first impression. For anyone who has seen the work of Jean Vigo (preferable of film screened in a theater with an engaged audience), I do not need to tell you what a master and early innovator he was. He was a great story teller and his influence has been far reaching to every generation of great directors after him. Even those young directors who don't know his work were influenced by his followers.

Thank you Criterion, for continuing to broaden and show appreciation for the medium of film. This was a great inclusion to your canon.

This terrific collection, put together with care and attentiveness by Criterion, is a must for any cinephile. Criterion offers all of Jean Vigo's work in clear, beautiful restorations which are the product of extensive research and repair work. The set also includes commentary for each of Vigo's four films, and informative, enriching extra features to shed life on the life, work and influence of Vigo on film both in France and beyond. Even the companion booklet offers four fine essays on Vigo. I cannot recommend this collection highly enough.

"L'Atalante" is not perhaps the greatest film ever, but it is the most original, in the sense that watching it is like a look at origins -- it is as if in watching l'Atalante you get a glimpse of the true significance of the first time anyone had ever picked up a camera and made a film: it is the best argument for anarchism ever. The world, light, people, water, even loss are seen through fresh eyes. The whole film is suffused with a kind of awe at existence. The scenes of the barge moving through the countryside and the industrial slums in the early light of day are like we are travelling through the beginning of the world, which is why it fits with the innocence and "new married" quality of the story -- the closest equivalent is Philip Larkin's poem, "Wedding Wind".

"The Complete Jean Vigo," consists of three short, early silent works of the French filmmaker, "A propos de Nice,""Taris," and "Zero de conduite," along with "L'Atalante," (1930),thankfully a talkie, a romantic drama that is considered one of the lesser known glories of early French cinema, which is a shame, as it is a masterpiece.

"A propos de Nice" is a rhythmic view of life in that bustling tourist city; it occasionally rises to unexpected absurd heights. "Taris" is a portrait of a swimming champion. "Zero de conduite" is an inventive, charming tale of rebellious boarding school students, a topic on which Vigo can be presumed to know a lot: It has been endlessly influential to other film makers world wide over the years.

"L'Atalante"is in black and white, runs a tight 89 minutes, and is the greatest achievement of Vigo, a too-little known but greatly respected and influential film maker, who died of tuberculosis, shortly after its completion, at the shockingly young age of 29. The film is now generally available only on this disk that constitutes the entire oeuvre of the director's short, turbulent life.

Vigo's master work opens as Juliette, a young girl who has never set foot outside her village, marries Jean, mate on a French river barge named "L'Atalante," and sets up housekeeping aboard. Also aboard are a cabin boy, and the colorful old sailor Pere Jules, played by the inimitable Michel Simon (Port of Shadows (The Criterion Collection),The Train). When the barge reaches Paris, Juliette, who has never seen that great city, slips off to take a look at it. Jean awakes, discovers her gone, and leaves her to her own devices in the French capital. She knows no one there, has no money, does not know the city at all, and will have a very hard time there. But so will Jean, on his own again, until Pere Jules goes to find her.

But this simple, engaging plot isn't the reason the film is so loved. It was restored in 2001, making Boris Kaufman's brilliant cinematography and Maurice Jaubert's lovely score accessible again. The picture is legendary for its sheer, sparkling beauty: the waterways of France, and of Paris - the movie was filmed in that city's "Bassin de la Villette, Paris 19"-- among other locations, have never looked more evocatively beautiful. The characters are full-blown, their actions unpredictable, confusing, true to life. The film is wildly imaginative, inventive, surrealist, and has been compared to the daring early works of Vigo's contemporaries, the better known Jean Cocteau and Luis Bunuel. It remains fresh today, with scenes that still have the power to surprise and absorb us.

Vigo was the son of Miguel Almareyda, a notorious anarchist, who died mysteriously in jail when Vigo was 12. The young boy was always in poor health: he was abandoned by his mother and sent from boarding school to boarding school. Lucky for us, he took up film at age 23. Just because Vigo is little-known today, doesn't mean his work is not accessible. You want to see what we're all talking about.

I AM A GREAT FAN OF OLD MOVIES, AND THIS SELECTION IS JUST WONDERFUL !! INTERESTING AND FANTASTIC MOVIES, SUCH AS "THE ATALANTE".

Jean Vigo made up in quality what his ouevre lacks in number. Two of the films here, ZERO DE CONDUITE and L'ATALANTE, are considered classics, and they certainly live up to their reputation. The Criterion Collection set is very nicely done, with high quality transfers and a host of additional background information of the films and filmmaker.

This wonderful blu-ray from the Criterion Collection includes all four films that the great French director Jean Vigo did in his tragically short life. With the wonderful documentary A Propos de Nice, that feels like a cross between the filmmaking of Dziga Vertov and Luis Bunuel. Then there is the short but brilliant documentary Taris about the French swimming champion that now seems like the prototype for all sports documentaries. Then there is the film Zero for Conduct, about a rebellion among young males in a private school that seems like a prototype for the Lindsay Anderson film If... Then there is the beautiful L'Atalante about newlyweds beginning their marriage on a canal barge. Truly great filmmaking with touching and heartbreaking sequences that show how masterful Vigo was. The Criterion Collection has scored yet again with this collection of great films. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys great cinema or the early workings of it.