A Propos de Nice
Dir: Jean Vigo
1930
****
Jean Vigo's 1930 debut À propos de Nice is a kind of travelogue that starts in the style of Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera and ends in a Jean Cocteauesque political swing at the wealthy. I don't like this as much as Vertov's or Cocteau's work of the early 30's but it was his first film and some of the compositions were truly original and spectacular of the time. Jean Vigo's greatest trick though was the way he left the camera running just that little longer than his counterparts did, adding a real sense of importance, sometimes hatred and often loathing. Beautiful and historically important cinema from a director who brought so much to film, at a very young age and only for a short while.