#16: L'atalante

L'atalante (Vigo, 1934)

L'atalante is one of the TSPDT top 100 that you can't find on DVD in the US. I had to buy a VHS copy on ebay. The particular copy I got was in circulation at the Seattle library in 1990. I was surprised when I put it in and it still played. Watching a film on an old VHS tape reminded me how much better DVDs are.

It's one of those films in the vein of Sunrise that tries to tell a love story that's universal to the human condition. Those stories, of course, seem far less universal when you watch them from a perspecitve after the cultural revolution. The story is that a girl from a small village marries the captain of a shipping vessel and leaves her home. The girl wants to see big cities, make a lot of new friends, and have a lot of new experiences. The guy is possessive and jealous and flips out when she tries to do anything that isn't sit around on the ship and be a wife. Later she sneaks off the ship to go see Paris, and the guy gets angry and leaves. When she's gone, he remembers how much he loves her.

Similar to Sunrise, this would never happen this way in a modern context. If a man behaved the way the man behaved, the woman would probably tell him to go frack himself. In a time when we've disregarded the notion of women's lives being possessed by their husbands, it's harder to connect with these films. It helps in Sunrise that the cinematography and scene staging are good enough to draw you in on their own accord. For L'atalante, that isn't the case, and the result is the film coming off like a historical relic.

Rating: *** 1/2 / 5

48/101


Others:

Spider: **** / 5

With the other Cronenberg films I've seen (History of Violence, the one with the twins), I tend to like what Cronenberg is trying to do but not be able to connect with the result. Spider explores the personal history of a schizophrenic man, and with the twist at the end, really draws me in like the other two didn't.


New films:

Please Give: 8/10

The film centers around a family that sells antiques they bought from the families of recently deceased, and a family whose belligerent 91 year old grandmother is the first family's neighbor. It's a multilinear story and a black comedy. The antique selling mother is always trying to do good for others, but in subtly hypocritical ways. She gives fives and twenties to homeless people on the street but won't give her daughter with serious self esteem issues the money to buy clothes to make her feel good about herself. The film is entertaining and funny, but also manages to make very poignant satire about current times.