“L’Atalante”, 1934. Directed by Jean Vigo; written by Jean Guinee, Albert Riera, and Vigo. Starring the incredible Michel Simon, Dita Parlo and Jean Daste.
Now showing in the lecture room at the Walker Art Center, running continuously as the museum is open, every ninety minutes.
I wish I had nothing better to do with my life that haunt the Walker Art Center this month, to lead unsuspecting patrons past Kiki Smith, up from their overpriced desserts, away from the sculpture garden and into the darkened lecture room. There, a special surprise awaits them, every ninety minutes: L’Atalante is playing, a sexy fairytale on a riverbarge, a film to mesmerize children and adults from three to ninety-three.
L’Atalante is the simple story of a barge captain who marries a beautiful young woman from a small village, and brings her upon his cat-crazy ship. The two are blissfully in love, and the movie runs along with the two lovers intent on discovering the tasty little secrets of a new marriage on this slow moving barge down the Seine. The crew of the ship includes a boy who appears touched in the head and, most amazingly, Michel Simon. He is a towering fellow with a tattooed chest that can be made to sing, the severed hands of his lover on a shelf, his room overrun with the detritus of a life at sea.
Eventually, the girl tires of the life of a barge, and is lured into Paris by a tricky saloon magician. The husband nearly goes mad, at one point jumping into the Seine only to see images of his wife swimming before him. For her part, Paris is a nightmare of whores, pickpockets, and cruelty. At one point, the lovers dream of being in each other’s arms in a scene so erotic, and yet so innocent, it puts David Lynch to shame.
When watching L’Atalante, you might find yourself gaping at Monsieur Simon, quite possibly the most arresting creature ever to grace the silver screen. Simon is as much a work of art as anything you’ll find in the museum. He was a boxer, and had the look of a well-worn pugilist: a thick slab of a chest, a face that looked as if it had kneaded by many a glove. Simon most famously was the lead in Renoir’s Boudou Sauve des Eaux, which was later remade as Down and Out in Beverly Hills. In L’Atalante, Simon’s character is, as David Thomson writes in his Biographical Dictionary of Film (a wonderful book by the way), a “sprawling, unclean satyr, pointing to the special mingling of self and character that is so necessary (and dangerous) in screen acting” and specifically in L’Atalante “a river creature, too rank, overwhelmingly private, and innately alien for polite society.”
As much as I enjoy the Walker, a ninety minute boat ride with Michel Simon would be quite a tonic for that polite society.
The director, Jean Vigo, is an interesting study as well. The son of an anarchist who was murdered in prison, Vigo was raised partially in a dark attic with literally dozens of cats, which make their presence known in this film, at times being hurled upon the actors. Vigo made only four films, dying shortly after L’Atalante was in the can, of tuberculosis.
How does one recommend leaving these beautiful April afternoons for a darkened room in a museum? How can I possibly suggest ignoring, even for ninety minutes, Kiki Smith’s striking sculptures, which you could spend a week trying to wrap your brain around? I don’t quite know, except to say that I personally can’t imagine a better day than one that might include the spray from the giant cherry in the garden, Smith’s Chernobyl crows, and the gyrating tattoos of Michel Simon.
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