The second film of Jean Vigo is “Jean Taris, Champion de Natation/Jean Taris“(1931). Vigo called for The International Congress of the Independent Cinema and after he came in Nice, he encountered an order for the film that is a documentary which is about Jean Taris who is a swimming champion. In this film, Vigo used different techniques for showing different swimming techniques and telling about the swimming body. Vigo shot some screens under the water and these shootings helped him for his last film, L’Atalante. Boris Kaufman who is a cinematographer had an impact on Vigo’s first and second films. He shot films in way of Cinema Verite and Kino-Pravda which are about documentary filmmaking style. Boris Kaufman helped Vigo for Zero de Conduite and L’Atalante and he was always together with Vigo about creating the poetic realist view on his films.

  Zero de Conduite (1933) is Jean Vigo’s third and most important film. Zero de Conduite reflected Jean Vigo’s childhood which lost beautifulness in the boarding school. We can see his lyrics and critical attitude in this film. The bigotry that was seen in France at that time was strongly criticized with Zero de Conduite.  According to Sales Gomes,

There are two words in Zero de Conduite, on the one hand, that of the children and the people, on the other that of the adults, the bourgeois. Vigo bases the children in reality, but with the grownups, he has not hesitated to accentuate their traits, almost to the limits of caricature… This division into two worlds and the film’s conclusion gives us all the elements of Vigo’s ideology and the social intentions of Zero de Conduite.

  According to Vigo’s children in Zero de Conduite, morality or “zero de conduite“ is just a tool for going street for weekends. These children understand very well morality is not a problem for grades; this attitude is just like Vigo’s attitude for morality. Jean Vigo tried to explain everything with children’s eyes not adult eyes and also this way created a realistic feature in the film. Everything in this film is childish. The film begins with some children are showing some tracks that they learned on holiday. They are always children so they always want to have fun. Therefore, they always have fun on the contrary with their teachers. Keeping the rules and having respect for teachers is important for teachers but children know this is not a problem for morality. They don’t give up their anarchist attitudes. There is only one teacher who knows to have fun with children and he is like “Charlot“ (Charlie Chaplin created this character). Charlot typing is not a coincidence; Vigo wants to say something about this typing. At the same time, the school manager is very short and he is like a little boy. Vigo accomplished us and he criticized domination with this character.

  Of course, the contumacy didn’t miss the sight out. Zero de Conduite was prohibited shortly after its presentation in France because this film was shown objectionable to the community. However, this was not an end for Jean Vigo. He continued to criticize the bigotry with his last film, L’Atalante.

  Jean Vigo shot L’Atalante in 1934 just before he died in the same year. L’Atalante was shown like his masterpiece. It is explained as “a fairy tale which is in the private world“. The film begins with the wedding for Jean and Juliette. After the wedding, for the first time, Juliette moved from her town and began a journey with Father Jules’ ship. In the beginning, the marriage is excited and enjoyable but after a short time, Juliette was bored from the ship. Also, she underestimated Jean’s works.  “Le Pere Julies“ who is the only one having fun with his toys and stuff for Juliette was a problem for Jean because Jean got jealous of Juliette.  

Pere Jules, the crusty old shipman who sets the tone of the film, keeps relics from around the world in his cabin (mechanical instruments, old photos, a knife from the south seas, a pair of pickled hands). This veritable gallery of Surrealist ‘found objects’ enlivens the constricted life of the married couple on a barge that plies its dull trade up and down the Seine. Through the unpredictable ingenuity of Pere Jules, a surrogate for the director, music magically sounds from a broken gramophone and the couple, full of watery visions, fall in love again.

     Alain Lovell says that: “L’Atalante is a love story which has a classic and credible end also tells about two lovers who came together. At the same time, there is a minor story in the film. The minor story appears with the screens about the external world or when Jean and Juliette make love, cats scratch them. In the film, the audience feels that the external world flops down on this pure world with whole power.“

  In this film, using imaginary elements don’t destroy the realist way of film. On the contrary Vigo combined surrealist elements with realistic features and in this way, he created a social criticism.

 Unfortunately, Vigo shot four films which if we add all films repeatedly, these four films cannot be 200 minutes. Also, none of these films were financial successes. When he suffered from the illness, he was forced to sell his camera. However, Vigo shot very important films which all include romanticism, realism, and poetic features. Vigo’s success emerged in 1945 with the reward which is given every year for the best directors in France; it is called Prix Jean Vigo. Finally, Jean Vigo is a director who is never be forgotten by the audience thank to his works about Poetic Realism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Coşkun, Esen. Dünya Sinemasında Akımlar. Ankara: Phoenix, 2011.

Ezra, Elizabeth. European Cinema. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Gomes, Salles. Jean Vigo (Shadows Book). U.S.A: Faber & Faber, 1999.

Lanzoni, Remi Fournier. French Cinema From it Beginings to the Present. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2004.

Lovell, Alan. Anarchist Cinema. Gorden Press, 1975.

Teksoy, Rekin. Sinema Tarihi. İstanbul: Oğlak Yayıncılık, 2005.