A Reality in Motion
It is rare for an oeuvre of such limited size – two short films, one medium-length film, and one feature, together totalling less than 170 minutes – to have such a great impact and reach within film history. It testifies to the originality, boldness, and artistic freedom with which Jean Vigo (1905–1934) shaped his brief passage through cinema. It is this love for whatever appears before his lens, both people and forms, that makes Vigo’s cinema so unique. “Vigo had such esteem, if you will,” Dita Parlo said in Jacques Rozier’s documentary about Vigo, “a devotion to every human being, to every person, that he tried not to touch them.” It results in a cinema where reality and fiction continually merge in a dynamic of osmosis, where reality is always in motion.

