Jean Vigo - A Propos de Nice (OST: Da MPCrew)

Movie: Jean Vigo - A Propos de Nice (1929) Music: Marc Perrone Crew / Thomas Hillion, Bertrand Pallier, Nicolas Pinto (2005) About the project : Production following the projection "Cine-Concert" (Dec 14, 2005) at Belfort (France) by the UTBM's Cinema Club "Seven'Art" in collaboration with students and musicians. This production is not a live recording of the show, however it is proposed as he result of a work that, we hope, could interest some people. The "Cine-Concert" project is an original idea from Xavier de Finance and Thomas Dupeux which goal is to present, during the same night two silent films featuring live music performance (the seconde movie was "A dog's life" Charlie Chaplin by UTBM's Orchestra). About the movie : Jean Vigo was surely one of the most surrealist directors who ever lived (briefly, as it turns out). It is difficult to think of another director who made so few films and yet had such a profound influence on other filmmakers. A Propos de Nice was the first of pantheon French filmmaker Jean Vigo's four feature films. According to Vigo's legions of admirers, the film represents Life as the director truly perceived it: Not the steadily flowing river that many assume Life to be, but a dizzying succession of vaguely related, seconds-lasting vignettes. A Propos de Nice is a highly subversive silent film examining social inequity in 1920s Nice. Is constructs around the central motif of the carnival a savage, frenetic vision of a superficial society in a state of putrefaction. It provides a look at a reality beyond the prosaic, common variety that so many films give us. The movie attempts nothing less than the restructuring of our perception of the world by presenting it to us not so much through a seamless, logical narrative, but rather through a fast-paced collection of only tangentially related shots. 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. As bold in its formal experimentation as it is in its gleefully morbid fascination with ugliness, the grotesque humour of its portraits of the holidaymakers that swarm over the Promenade des Anglais (sometimes suggestively intercut with shots of animals!) is brutally undercut by images of distressing poverty. The uneasy atmosphere of indolence and boredom boiling over into lustful frenzy while willfully ignoring the encroaching sense of death and decay that surround it makes this Vigo's darkest film. "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." -- Jean Vigo Essentially a satiric documentary of Nice, where the tubercular Vigo had been compelled to settle for his health, the film resembles the montage-like "visual symphonies" of Russian director Dziga Vertov. Indeed, Vertov's brother, Boris Kaufmann, served as cinematographer on this and two subsequent Vigo productions. The delicate blend between realism and surrealism in A Propos de Nice would later be melded with Vigo's sense of poetry in his future masterpieces Zero de conduite and L'Atalante. Vigo's filmography - A Propos de Nice (1930) - Taris (1931) - Zero de Conduite (1933) - L'Atalante (1934)

Blip | September 7, 2008