Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Short documentary directed by Jean Vigo about the French swimmer Jean Taris. The film is notable for the many innovative techniques that Vigo uses, including close ups and freeze frames of the swimmer's body.
Jean Vigo's short documentary on swimmer Jean Taris is less a conventional sports doc than an avant-garde visual poem. The cinematography is genuinely exceptional — underwater shots, freeze frames, slow motion, and extreme close-ups of the body in motion were startlingly innovative for 1931 and remain visually arresting. Novelty is equally high: Vigo transforms a mundane promotional subject into something singular and poetic, anticipating experimental film language by decades. The ending, with Taris 'walking on water,' is a witty, surreal flourish. Plot is minimal by design — there is essentially no narrative structure — and acting is irrelevant in the traditional sense, though Taris's natural presence registers.