Preceded by Gaumont newsreels of 1934. A propos de Nice (Jean Vigo, France, 1930). A "kino-eye" document of Nice, a town "living a game: the great hotels, the tourists, the roulette, the paupers. Everything is doomed to die" (Vigo). Photographed by Boris Kaufman. (22 mins, Silent) Taris and Swimming (Taris et la natation) (Jean Vigo, France, 1932). In a documentary on a champion swimmer, Vigo experimented with aquatic camerawork he would use so brilliantly in L'Atalante. "There is an obvious connection here with the Vigo theme that elements of dream and imagination co-exist with, and are part of, physical reality" (Jean M. Smith). Photographed by Boris Kaufman. (10 mins) Vigo's only full-length feature is a poetic masterpiece on the theme of passionate love. The restored L'Atalante reveals Vigo's very deliberate use of fantastic set-pieces and bizarre juxtapositions that were most dear to the director. In telling of a young barge captain and his peasant bride in their first days together on his barge-and their separation when she sneaks off to Paris-L'Atalante surprises realism with surrealism, much as Jean is surprised by his wife's desires. Shot against a backdrop of the Parisian canals, with which "we were intoxicated," as Vigo wrote, the film anticipates the methods of neorealism by almost fifteen years, particularly in its use of actors "to reveal," as Vigo said, "the hidden reason from a gesture, to extract from an ordinary person his interior beauty-or a caricature of him..." Michel Simon as the grisly, tattooed P?re Jules, and Dita Parlo as Juliette, are unforgettable.