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Jean Vigo was born in Paris on April 26th 1905, in an attic room at the heart of the anarchist and revolutionary movement. His father, Miguel Almereyda (a pseudonym for Eugène Bonaventure de Vigo), edited the radical newspaper 'Le Bonnet Rouge' and was imprisoned after an accusation of receiving a cheque from German funds. On the night of August 13th 1917, Almereyda was apparently murdered in his cell, an event that would haunt his son Jean for the rest of his life.
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Unable to raise her son alone, Vigo's mother left him in the custody of his grandmother and her
husband, Gabriel Aubrès, a photographer in Montpellier. In October 1918 he was sent to school
in Millau under a false name, to protect him from the scandal of the 'Almereyda' affair. Vigo would
later call upon his memories of the 4 years he spent at the school when he came to write ZÉRO
DE CONDUITE.
Vigo suffered from poor health since childhood and in 1926, stricken with tuberculosis, he was
nursed at Font-Romeu. There he met another patient, Elisabeth Lozinska (Lydou), the daughter
of a Polish industrialist. Vigo and Lydou settled in Nice in 1928, married in January 1929 and re-
ceived a small amount of money from Lydou's father, which Vigo used to buy a second hand
Debrie camera.
He found work as a camera assistant at Franco-Film in Nice, then assisted L H Burel in the ma-
king of a film entitled 'Vénus'. In autumn 1929, suffering from poor health, the Vigos had to con-
sult specialists in Paris, where they met Boris Kaufman, a cameraman of Russian origin, whom
Vigo invited to collaborate on the documentary he was planning, A PROPOS DE NICE. Vigo's
avante-garde film, a harsh critique of Nice society, was warmly received at its first screening at
the Vieux-Colombier in Paris on May 28th 1929, but found limited distribution.
The Gaumont-Franco-Film-Aubert company was producing a series of documentary shorts un-
der the heading 'The Living Journal', and asked Vigo in December 1930 to shoot a documentary
on the swimming champion Jean Taris. However, Vigo found further work difficult to come by
and was struggling financially; mounting debt forced him to sell his camera just prior to the birth,
on June 30th 1931, of his daughter Luce. Things did not improve when another documentary the
GFFA commissioned him to make - about the tennis player Cochet - fell through.
In search of work, the family settled for good in Paris where Vigo met Jacques-Louis Nounez, a
54 year old breeder from the Camargue, film enthusiast and aspiring producer. Nounez's pro-
posed project on the Camargue was quickly dropped in favour of a film written by Vigo, 'Les
Cancres', which would become ZÉRO DE CONDUITE. Filming commenced on 24th December,
with Boris Kaufman as cameraman.
ZÉRO DE CONDUITE was first screened on April 7th 1933 at the Artistic Cinema in rue de Douai,
but was controversially banned by the censor for its anarchic attack on public authorities and
the priesthood. But Nounez kept faith with Vigo and embarked upon another project with him, al-
though this time the producer chose the script, a conventional love story entitled 'L'Atalante'.
On November 10th 1933, Vigo began filming L'ATALANTE in poor weather conditions and his
health suffered during the shoot. Seriously ill, Vigo was unable to complete the editing of the film,
a task that fell to Louis Chavance, with only minimal supervision by the director. At a screening
on 25th April 1934 L'ATALANTE was poorly received by theatre owners and provincial distri-
butors. Following numerous changes and cuts, the film was released in September, under the
title 'Le Chaland Qui Passe', after a popular song of the time. On October 5th 1934, Jean Vigo
died of septicaemia. Lydou died on April 24th 1939.
Following his death, Vigo's reputation, and that of L'ATALANTE in particular, grew steadily among film enthusiasts. On October 30th 1940, Studio des Ursulines screened a version of L'ATALANTE under its original title; ZÉRO DE CONDUITE was finally freed by the censor in November 1945; and 1950 saw the first of several attempts to restore L'ATALANTE, culminating in Gaumont's major restoration of 1990. Although his legacy amounts to less than three hours of film, Jean Vigo is now widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived. |
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