poliphilo

Aug. 19th, 2024

A battery operated toy in the front room turned itself on and played a little tune: "This old man, he played one, he played knick-knack on my thumb." I went and took a look at it and couldn't see any explanation that wasn't paranormal.

Then it did it again....

Here's something I came across the other day on a podcast. I don't know its ultimate source. The guys were talking about DMT and other dimensions and one of them said, acknowledging it as a quote- " What we call normality is just a hallucination limited by the senses."

I remember two dreams from last night. In one I was sorting through piles of stuff I'd been storing in my mother's garage- some of which was compromising, much of which was junk and in the other I was trying to persuade a singer who looked remarkably like Charles Aznavour that he ought to be working as a Charles Aznavour tribute act. I understand the first one; the second will take some thinking about.

"What the fuck do you want me to do with that?" asked Jean Vigo when his producer presented him with the screenplay for L'Atalante.

He made it anyway- on condition he be allowed to rejig the story and use it as a skeleton on which to hang his own obsessions.

A young couple take their honeymoon on the barge that he captains. They have their ups and downs. That's just about all there is to it. But it's all that's needed.

"It's a nice little film." I thought when I'd finished watching it, "but does it really deserve to keep turning up on lists of the greatest movies ever?"

But I've not been able to shake it.

And I've put off watching other movies because I need time for my impressions to settle down,

It has the qualities of one of those haunting dreams that one can't quite fathom. Which is a roundabout way of calling it "deep".

And yet it never quite ceases to be an exercise in realism. "Poetic realism" is the category it gets slotted into. It's visually beautiful and there are moments of magic and surreality. One might be tempted to call it Felliniesque if Vigo hadn't come first- by something like 20 years.

There are three principal roles. Dita Parlo and Jean Dastre are engaging- but never soppy- as the young couple and Michel Simon- as the barge's mate- gives an a performance that- like the movie itself- expands in the memory. Simon was a very odd human being. I'd thought of comparing him to Peter Sellers or calling him Falstaffian- but comparisons sell him short and basically he's one of a kind. Vigo realised that he was best ridden on a very loose rein and let him improvise.

Vigo was consumptive. He made L'Atalante on the Seine in winter, the cold and damp exacerbated his condition and he was dead within weeks of completing it....