Review of L'Atalante (1934) by Edith N — 10 Apr 2008

Another French film? Yes. Something that qualifies under the category of "weird damn French crap"? No. It's actually a pretty straightforward story. Further, I want to imply neither than all French film is weird or that all weird damn crap is French. Certainly we've done our share of weird damn American crap--see [i]The Man Who Fell to Earth[/i] for a sterling example. Some of the French movies we've done--weird and not--have been brilliant, and some of them, like this one, have been completely linear.

At the beginning of the film, Jean (Jean Dasté) and Juliette (Dita Parlo) have gotten married. They're living on his barge after that, but she feels stifled by life there and longs to get out. Finally, they reach Paris, where she has been promised time to wander the city. Unfortunately, their chance is wasted by the old [i]le père[/i] Jules (Michel Simon), who first is off running errands and then is off getting drunk and seeing a psychic. When they finally get a chance to spend some time in the city, a street mountebank (now, there's an expression you don't get to use often enough!) woos her, and Jean hauls her back to the barge. When the mountebank tracks her down and continues wooing her, she makes up her mind, slips off the barge, and wanders Paris on her own. In equal frustration, Jean leaves without her.

These are two people who love each other enough to act very silly over one another. Jean only develops his frustration because he's jealous. He thinks she's run off with the mountebank, which of course she hasn't. She loves Jean, which makes her willing to live on the cramped barge in the first place, but she's never had the chance to see Paris. In my head, of course, France is a very small country; all of Europe is made of small countries to me. But, naturally, there's small and then there's small. It's entirely possible that Juliette grew up as far from Paris as I did from Tijuana, and I never went there.

Juliette is young. [i]Le père[/i] Jules does not have that excuse. He's just an old ne'er-do-well. (Hurrah for another term not used often enough.) He's covered in tattoos and is irresponsible enough to go get drunk when he knows that people are waiting for him. It's true that he's the most willing to go looking for Juliette, but realistically, it's pretty much his fault that she's gone in the first place.

This is a simple film. The filming is simple. The music is simple. The story is simple. But sometimes, all the complications that crowd other films just make them bulky, not good. In fact, in many of the cases we've examined here over the last nearly 700 entries, the simpler films are the better films. So. Make your decision accordingly.