Complete Jean Vigo, The (DVD)
Even among cinema’s legends, Jean Vigo stands apart. The son of a notorious anarchist, Vigo had a brief but brilliant career making poetic, lightly surrealist films before his life was cut tragically short by tuberculosis at age twenty-nine. Like the daring early works of his contemporaries Jean Cocteau and Luis Buñuel, Vigo’s films refused to play by the rules. This set includes all of Vigo’s titles: À propos de Nice, an absurdist, rhythmic slice of life from the bustling coastal city; Taris, an inventive short portrait of a swimming champion; Zéro de conduite, a radical, delightful tale of boarding-school rebellion that has influenced countless filmmakers; and L’Atalante, widely regarded as one of cinema’s finest achievements, about newlyweds beginning their life together on a canal barge. These are the witty, visually adventurous works of a pivotal film artist.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New high-definition digital restorations of all four of Jean Vigo’s films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray edition
- Audio commentaries featuring Michael Temple, author of Jean Vigo
- Score for À propos de Nice by Marc Perrone, from 2001
- Alternate edits from À propos de Nice, featuring footage cut by Vigo
- Episode of the French television series Cinéastes de notre temps about Vigo, from 1964
- Conversation from 1968 between filmmakers François Truffaut and Eric Rohmer on L’Atalante
- Animated tribute to Vigo by filmmaker Michel Gondry
- Les voyages de “L’Atalante,” film restorer and historian Bernard Eisenschitz’s 2001 documentary tracking the history of the film
- Video interview from 2001 with director Otar Iosseliani on Vigo
- New and improved English subtitle translations
- PLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by critics Michael Almereyda, Robert Polito, B. Kite, and Lucy Sante
New cover by Jason Hardy