A LANDMARK FILM - Jean Vigo's 1930s poetic realist story of barge life in Paris later influenced the French New Wave

Few films can claim to have inspired two revolutions. Jean Vigo's masterpiece not only established the visual style of 1930s poetic realism as practised by Jean Renoir and Marcel Carné, but was also one of the key influences on the New Wave of the late 1950s and directors such as François Truffaut. It's a simple, almost uneventful picture, chronicling barge captain Jean Dasté's first days of marriage to impressionable country girl Dita Parlo. Yet it becomes a mesmerising personal vision thanks to Vigo's sophisticated blend of fairy-tale romance, documentary realism, surrealist fantasy, bawdy humour and working-class song. Michel Simon's scene-stealing improvisation (most notable while surrounded by cats) and the exceptional cinematography further enhance the pleasure to be derived from one of the most completely cinematic pictures ever made.

Reviewed By David Parkinson in Radio Times Film Guide