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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The most beautiful film in the world!, 21 Nov 2004
By A Customer
When I first saw L'Atalante, I was completely breathtaken by this beautiful and sincere film. It is hard to believe that this film was made in the 1930's as it was so ahead of its time. The way that it is shot, almost dreamlike in a way, is utter poetry. The film revolves around a newly wed couple who are adjusting to life on board a canal boat. Jean is the captain of L'Atalante and is finding it difficult to cope with the pressures of his job and being a husband. Juliette, his wife, has never left the confines of her small village before. Added to the mix are some very colourful characters, in particular, Pere Jules played by Michel Simon. There is something very humane and compassionate about this film and I urge you to watch it! For anyone who loves French cinema, this is an absolute must!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A DELIGHT, 23 Jun 2000
By A Customer
This is a simple love story of two newly-weds living on the barge "L'Atlante". Soon they realise that life is not the dream they had first imagined, but thanks to the intervention of the First Mate Pere Jules, everything works out well in the end. Nothing much happens in this film. But nothing much happens very beautifully. It's a charming film, both dramatic and melodramatic, and a wonderful example of the adage "Love Conquers All". See it, be uplifted, be charmed.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Gritty, 1930's young married love, 20 Jun 2006
If you want to know how stupid, raw, sexist, naive, passionate, jealous and accepting two young french newlyweds can be - this is the film for you. Juliette and Jean are a young working class couple who embark on a difficult life on a canal barge called L'Atalante. The best characterization in the film is by Juliette, an utterly charming and lovely young, blond frenchwoman who, with great aplomb takes up married life with a brute of a husband, the captain of L'Atalante. The plot has been spelled out elsewhere, so I won't go into that. Suffice to say the eternal formula of enchantment, betrayal, suffering and reconciliation is in evidence.
In the Great Depression years of 1930's France, in an urban landscape so bleak and despairing, the madness of young love plays out in flirting, jealousy, violence, absurdity and joy. Do you suburbanites ever expect to know all that? Will you find it at the mall, wrapped in celophane, priced on sale at $79.99? The scenes in this film take place before television, computers, atomic weapons, ethnic cleansing in europe, electric kitchen appliances, wall to wall carpets, smoke alarms, CAT scans, cadaver body part replacements, and MTV.
The bleakness of urban France plays out in the background. The lines at soup kitchens or job openings. The theft of Juliette's handbag and the brutal beating of the thief by the crowd that caught up with him. The gendarme dragging him away. The now absurd sight of the performer who became obsessed with her to the point of following her to the L'Atalante on a bicycle, carrying on his back a huge drum, a trombone and a few other instruments of the one man band sort - serenading her on the barge until Jean cuffed him and tossed him off.
The perfomer's obsessive 'love' contrasted with the ultimately more enduring love and passion of the young couple, who, after the shameful scene of the husband, Jean, deciding to leave her stranded in port after her fling with the other man played out with him coming to his senses to return for her. In the poignant last scene Juliette boards L'Atalante and enters their cabin where Jean awaits, having shaved and spruced himself up on being told she was approaching.
In a way twenty-first century folks may not recognize, love, passion, and joy triumph as they fall into each others arms. How a charming, captivating young woman like Juliette can forgive the despicable behavior of her new husband, I can't fathom. Or how Jean can endure to see the woman he loves accepting the gratuitous flirting of the other man without becoming enraged, I find equally impossible. Nonetheless, in each of our lives we have to learn to accept five impossible things before breakfast each day. We have to be simple and forgiving like animals at play. Puppies know more about how to live a life than we do in this new century. We live like ants. They lived like human beings.
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