071 - A Propos de Nice, 1930, France. Dir. Jean Vigo.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

071 - A Propos de Nice, 1930, France. Dir. Jean Vigo.

Ah, Nice!

Nice is nice.

What a lovely little travel video.

This is like our other travel video, Sans Soleil (1983) (015, January 15), by Chris Marker.  But without the pretentious philosophizing.

It could be used by travel agents to invite you to visit.

Come to Nice, on the Cote d'Azur, the Azure Coast, the French Riviera.

You too could relax on the beach, on the boardwalk, on the strand.  You can play lawn bowling.  You can dance.  You can dine.  You can enjoy Carnival.

Except . . .

Wait.

What exactly is going on with those rich tourists?

They are walking like ostriches.

They are tanning into crocodiles.

They are changing clothes until they have none.

They look . . . bored.

Embarrassed.

Silly.

What is that garbage doing on the storm drain?

What is that stray cat doing staring forlornly into the camera?

What are those boys doing on the street playing a French version of Rock, Paper, Scissors?

Do they not have something constructive to do?

What is that boy doing with missing fingers?

Who are those homeless men?

Jean Vigo lived to be 29 years old.

His parents were anarchists and lived life on the run.

His father was murdered when he was 12.  By Socialists.

He was sent to boarding school under an assumed identity.

He made his first short film at age 25.

He contracted tuberculosis at age 21 and died at age 29.

He lived a life of poverty and died in obscurity.

He made three short films and one feature film.

The films he did make were banned or butchered.

When he died they were forgotten.

Yet Jean Vigo is now considered by some to be the patron saint of French film.

He influenced the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) of the 1960s.

He is studied in film school.

He is voted among the greats.

John Keats.  James Dean.  Hank Williams.  Edgar Allan Poe.

Can you think of other artists who died young or who died in obscurity?  Or both?  But who now are known for their genius?

We open on miniatures.  A male doll and female doll arrive by toy train.  The train disappears.  They are ready to travel.

Except . . .

Wait.

They are yanked away by a croupier's rake.  With the . . .

Craps.  Chips.

Perhaps this trip wasn't all it was cracked up to be.  Perhaps it was cracked up.  Peut-être.

Now we are looking down on Nice.  In a few moments we will be looking down on Nice.

Are you familiar with the opening shots of West Side Story (1961).  A helicopter flies above Manhattan with the camera pointed straight down.

It feels daring.  Exhilarating.  Something fresh and new in cinematography.

The cinematographic term for this camera angle is the same term you have known since childhood: a bird's-eye view.

With the vertical lines of the buildings foreshortened and tapering down towards an imaginary vanishing point beneath the Earth's crust.

If you know the show CSI, the original one, the one set in Las Vegas, then you know that they open every episode with this kind of shot looking down on Las Vegas.  Straight down.

It is also beautiful.  Daring.  Exhilarating.  But it feels as though they stole it from West Side Story.

So did other movies and TV shows.

Once again, any time anyone does anything for the first time ever, you can be sure that it was done before.

A Propos de Nice does it thirty-one years before West Side Story.  Thirty-one years before!

Yet that is OK, is it not?

When someone hits a homerun, do you scoff, "Meh!  It's been done before?"  Or do you cheer?

We look down on the city.  We look down on the beach.

Then we move down to the city and we move down to the beach.

And if we look closely, we observe that something witty is going on.

These seemingly random shots that could have been filmed by your dad during last summer's vacation (if last year were 1931 and you went to Nice on vacation), begin to unfold themselves as having been meticulously planned.

One shot comments on the previous shot or one made earlier.  In some kind of counterpoint.

Like the playful things Bach does with the fugue.  Some notes are going up the scale.  Some are going down.  Some are going twice as fast.  Some are going twice as slowly.  Some mirror each other.

And yet at every given moment they add up to a complete chord, and all the chords move in proper progression.

Or like poetry.  Where one word comments on the one before or one made earlier.  Where words have duple or treble meaning.  Double entendre.  Cunning punning.

Poetic Montage.

In dialectical structure.  Thesis.  Antithesis.  Synthesis.  The rich.  The poor.  The combined.

A woman struts down the beach.  An ostrich struts down the beach.  The woman is an ostrich.

A man sunbathes.  His skin gets darker.  It turns black.  Crocodiles crawl.  He has crocodile skin.

You can watch A Propos de Nice on multiple levels.

As an anarchist's dream of a future utopian society where the members of the working class take possession of the means of production.

As a clever and witty visual play on images and logical structure.

As an early example of experimental camera work and editing.

As a fun romp through Carnival on the French Riviera, replete with dancing and danceable music.

Or as a travelogue for Nice!  Even with the garbage over the storm drain.  After all, every city in the world has that.

And it does not stop you from going.

And having a good time.