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Barge Life

On Jean Vigo's "L'Atalante"

by Florian Deroo

Type
Essays
Subject
One FilmL'Atalante
Keywords
Jean Vigo
Publishing date
2025 (July 02, 2025)
Publisher
Punctum Books
Language
English
Size of a pocketbookRelative size of this bookSize of a large book
Relative size
Physical desc.
Paperback • 102 pages
5 x 8 inches (12.5 x 20.5 cm)
ISBN
978-1-68571-192-4
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Book Presentation:
Waves washing up against the hull, a bed and a small stove, the deck hatch sealed shut — the vessel is the ultimate dwelling.

How to live together in cramped quarters? How to create a microcosm against hostile surroundings? In Barge Life, Florian Deroo tackles these question by looking at a mythical classic of French cinema: Jean Vigo’s 1934 film L’Atalante. A work brimming with the energies of surrealism and anarchism, L’Atalante follows a young couple, two shipmates, and a clowder of cats who dwell in the belly of a river barge. Deroo offers a wide-ranging essay on the film, revealing how it invokes a small group that withdraws from the rhythm of modern life to establish a different kind of existence elsewhere. In L’Atalante’s most riveting moments, the river barge becomes a vehicle for a powerful fantasy: a flexible collective life, lived in sensuous interdependence.

Combining film criticism, philosophy, and biography, this book reconsiders a forerunner of the French New Wave and the early death of its director. Drawing readers into the living spaces of L’Atalante, Deroo explores the allure of retreating into a self-sufficient shelter, along with its intractable problems.

See the publisher website: Punctum Books

See L'Atalante (1934) on IMDB ...

> On a related topic:

Intersections:Writings on cinema

Intersections (2012)

Writings on cinema

by Sam Rohdie

Subject: Countries > France

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