Meet Vigo

French New Wave pioneer François Truffaut said Jean Vigo’s films evoked a “carnal, physical reality.” 

Yet Truffaut speaks of only one feature film and three shorts, a collection of films from the early 1930s that did not receive due attention until the late 1950s and could not be seen properly until now.

Criterion’s “The Complete Jean Vigo” assembles the entire work of a highly influential but barely known director who died at age 29.

Vigo’s two most famous films, “L’Atalante” and “Zéro de conduite,” anchor the package.
“L’Atalante,” a film that has forever been seen at a butchered running time, is a lovely romance between a newlywed couple struggling to make marriage work. Vigo’s gritty, down-to-earth romance is a masterpiece thanks to a hint of fantasy.

The second is a Dickensian comedy about children rebelling at boarding school.