In 1928, Jean Vigo found a job in the Nice studios of the Franco-Film production company. He cherished the city, its monuments, and its natural setting, but he only had contempt for its role as a meeting place for the rich. This ambivalent position also characterizes Vigo’s city symphony, which comprises the stereotypical images of the Mediterranean luxury resort: the sea, the beach, regattas, palm trees, upper-class strollers on the Promenade des Anglais, grand hotels, ballrooms, et cetera. However, these clichés are juxtaposed with shots of Nice’s other side, consisting of an urban landscape of poverty, slums with open sewers, garbage, and lepers. Moreover, the elegant parts of Nice are rendered in a grotesque way: the beau monde is not always beautiful, sunbathers (who are associated with crocodiles) are completely burned by the sun, and footage of elegant ladies is sardonically intercut with shots of their dogs and an ostrich.
This fascination for the grotesque culminates in the extensive portrayal of Nice’s carnival. Vigo’s idiosyncratic masterpiece is marked by a fluid fusion of styles resonating with several trends of 1920s vanguard cinema. Evoking the love for atmospheric effects of French Impressionist cinema, Vigo focuses on the overwhelming appeal of material and sensitive phenomena such as the presence of water. The waves of the sea create a flowing rhythm that also marks other parts of the film, such as the swaying aerial shots of the city or the exploration of strollers on the Promenade who are caught by a highly mobile (and often candid) camera. The film’s grotesque elements indicate Vigo’s affinities with Surrealism, which are also expressed by the use of trick effects (such as in the opening sequence with doll tourists arriving by train, who are eventually raked in by a croupier) and the ample use of alienating juxtapositions (e.g., dancing women in slow-motion intercut with funerary statues and phallic factory chimneys). Last but not least, Vigo and cameraman Boris Kaufman evoke Soviet cinema with their use of tilted angles, unconventional camera positions, alternating camera speeds, and striking montage effects creating a poignant form of social critique.
Steven Jacobs
further reading
Gomes, Paulo Emilo Salles, Jean Vigo (London: Faber and Faber, 1998).
Temple, Michael, Jean Vigo (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).
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