L'Atalante (1934)

Jean Vigo's film L'Atalante (sometimes called Le chaland qui passe) is about a newlywed couple's trip aboard a ship called L'Atalante. The husband is a ship captain and takes his bride, who he has only known for a short while, aboard the small ship to deliver cargo. The ship stops for a few days in Paris and the couple ends up in a fight. Personally, I thought this plot was about as boring as any film I have ever seen.

Despite my hatred for this film, it is generally very well-regarded. I'll admit that the film makes use of all sorts of fancy camera tricks for 1934. Despite these technological achievements, I had problems with how many sequences seemed like a silent film. Quite often there were rather long sequences without any sound with a slowed down frame rate that looked like a silent film. Given that this film was made quite a while after the end of the sound era, I found it rather difficult to ignore these aspects. The film is also celebrated for being a Precursor to the French New Wave. The film has several aspects of that movement, and many prominent New Wave directors suggest they were heavily influenced by this film. This film, like other New Wave films, doesn't have much in the way of a plot. Unlike some of the other films I've seen, it was quite obvious that there was no plot while watching this film as everything about it left me quite bored.

Overall, I doubt very many people would enjoy this film. This film is important, but I'm not sure being important alone makes a film great. I've seen plenty of important films that were interesting to watch but this film was not interesting at any point.

29/100
F