Watch À propos de Nice For Free

Lack of good storyline.

Just perfect...

How sad is this?

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Cote d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.This is a subversive silent film inspired by Bolshevik newsreels which considered social inequity in 1920s Nice. Vigo himself said, "In this film, by showing certain basic aspects of a city, a way of life is put on trial... the last gasps of a society so lost in its escapism that it sickens you and makes you sympathetic to a revolutionary solution." Historically, the film is interesting not just for its class commentary, but for the involvement of Boris Kaufman, who was a virtual unknown before working as a cinematographer on "On the Waterfront" (1954).

Miraculously enough we have these films not only on DVD but on Blu-ray, courtesy of the Criterion Collection. Considering that we'll never know what Vigo would have done after "L'Atalante" (1934), it's somehow gratifying that also his smaller works such as this and "Taris, roi de l'eau" (1931) receive such meticulous attention, because by no means are his two first films, despite the canonical status of both "Zéro de conduite" (1933) and "L'Atalante", worthless efforts and merely valuable in retrospect.An independent film in the true sense of the word (financed with the dowry Vigo received), there's something cosmically exuberant in the whole thing. It reminds me quite a lot of Welles' first film, "The Hearts of Age" (1934). Both films, by accident, might be shrugged off as first baby steps of a soon-blossoming genius, but they're both fine projections of cinematic ambition and energy. This film's raw form gives it an edge of aggression, and it swerves from moments of enormous zest to quiet reflection.On the Criterion there's a very good audio commentary by Michael Temple. He sees in the film a typical French essayist approach in terms of structuralization, consisting of an introduction (a general introduction to theme/location with aerial shots of Nice), thesis (shots of bourgeois, rich people walking around) and antithesis (the poor), leading up to a synthesis (the carnival). This does justice to Vigo's ideas of social cinema, I think, and is helpful in understanding the film's rhythm. Also nice are Temple's notions on the visual gags, which there are aplenty. This underlines what I love about cinema and Vigo: it's a visual medium, and to enable film to be film is to allow the thinking and hence exposition to be visual.One is left wondering what Vigo would've done had he lived longer. But that which we have, we cherish.

If you're not awake for it A Propos de Nice could be a little boring, or just a little tiresome. There's no real specific 'point' to the visual, silent documentary that is Jean Vigo's first film, though what is and what isn't shown does strike some interest, along with some other miscellaneous images. It starts off with a spellbinding (and for the time revolutionary) image though, of the city of Nice seen from an angle high above in a plane. From there Vigo shows the upper class life, the vicariousness, the fun (driving cars, swimming in the ocean, going to nice restaurants, dancing), and then the film ends with a strange mix of images of smoke and fire and smokestacks and people laughing in close-up. The best thing about this short film is that there's a free-form approach to getting the city. It's part of what were called the 'city symphony' documentaries, where filmmakers just took there cameras around the city, getting images that delighted, or shocked, them. The film goes by with some strange camera moves, some low-angle perspectives of women doing the 'can-can', and more smiling. But probably the most provocative (and my favorite) image of the film is when there is a woman's body on a chair, we see her in different pieces of clothing, until she's nude. Is this surrealist, or just experimenting in form? It's not like a Bunuel film, for example, because it's more about getting the scenery and shapes of the buildings in Nice than outright provoking the audience. But on the other hand, there is a mix of Freudian, lightly surreal qualities to the film that I appreciated greatly, as were in a few independent filmmakers at the time. It's both exhilarating and a little dull- with the wrong soundtrack (I saw it with a common baroque score) its interest swings depending on the moment. If I can find it, I'd watch it again, especially after seeing more of Vigo's works.

Jean Vigo was surely one of the most surrealist directors who ever lived (briefly, as it turns out). I had the privilege to view his film essay on Nice, Italy, and while I understood very little of it, I'll give it points for originality and style.Vigo chooses not to point the camera at Nice's attractions or sights, but instead focuses on the people, from the rich aristocrats on the beach, to the low-life sweepers. The whole point of this effort is to say that all sorts of people exist in Nice, but the people who come here are the rich Tourist scum, and besides, I just want to look at scantily clad babes.At least, I THINK was the moral.