I'll tell you why so serious

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This black-and-white documentary movie was the first effort as a g'filmmaker by Jean Vigo and he was only in his early-mid-20s when he shot this 22-minute movie. Due to his untimely death at the age of 29, he only made two other short films and one feature film afterward. Yet this is enough for some to call him one of the best directors of all time. I cannot agree with that. I watched all his short films and I have to say I am fairly unimpressed. Also I cannot see a deep message in this one here. It's really only a documentary about the city of Nice where we see its monuments, its sights, its buildings and of course the people from Nice. I wonder why Vigo chose this city on the Cote d'Azur and not Paris, the place where he was born and where he died. Anyway, the people in here look so happy most of the time. The had no clue what was going to happen in the next 15 years yet. It's probably better that way. What I found interesting about this documentary is that it was co-written by Boris Kaufman and it's his only credit as a writer. Kaufman is a cinematographer who worked on all Vigo films and later won an Academy Award for his cinematography for "On the Waterfront". Anyway, I do not recommend this Nice documentary. It's really not that interesting to watch in my opinion.

This priceless, jokey little movie has got to be one of the very first self-conscious assaults on the 'documentary' aesthetic. Purporting to do for Nice what Walter Ruttmann did for Berlin, in fact the movie is constantly delving below surfaces, or else simply defacing them, with the obvious intent of generating as much outrage as possible. There's plenty of shots of the various goings-on about town, but from the opening animation of tourist puppets being swept up by the croupier, everything is subject to the most explicitly subjective commentary imaginable: a rich lady is intercut with an ostrich; a filthy alleyway precedes a lavish ballroom dance; grotesque papier-mache parade mascots give way to closeups of the miserable guys inside the costumes, and soon the whole parade devolves into a violent flower-flinging riot. One hilarious scene cuts from street musicians to countless citizens dozing in their chairs, then to a shot of a woman, which turns out to be staged as we dissolve to her in outfit after outfit, until finally she sits naked! Another sexual outrage comes toward the end, as a gang of excitingly plain women mug carnally for the camera while we look casually up their skirts. Definitely driven by contempt, but it's healthy and well-aimed contempt, ridiculing the artifice and inattention that has typified tourist bureau cinema since the genre was invented. And it's more than justified by the mad invention and energy that the filmmakers apply to their polemic.

Other reviewers have already commented on Vigo's subversive deconstruction of the various narrative requirements and visual iconography of the travelogue format for the purposes of cutting satire, to the point at which we almost forget to view the film on such a level; instead taking it entirely at face value. A Propos de Nice (1930) is a short work, though only twenty minutes shorter than Zéro de conduit (1933), which is an obvious minor masterpiece. Whereas that particular film - as well as the director's final feature, the even greater L'Atlante (1934) - presented captivating images and fragmented ideas backed by traces of character and narrative, the film in question is a purely visual experience. To understand the film we must read deeply into the subtle juxtaposition of the images as they are presented to us, in order to greater appreciate the ideas that Vigo is trying to convey.As with his second short film, Taris, roi de l'eau (1931), which looked at the daily routine of a synchronised swimmer, A Propos de Nice takes a conventionally bland presentational format and style and transforms it into a pure cinematic event. It is still, in all respects, a small-scale work; one that may confound and disappoint audiences looking for more of the magical realism and pretty evocation of youth and beauty presented by both Zéro de conduit and L'Atlante, though it is worth experiencing purely for Vigo's radical presentation and satirical evaluation of class and the bourgeoisie.

Jean Vigo was surely one of the most surrealist directors who ever lived (briefly, as it turns out). I had the privilege to view his film essay on Nice, Italy, and while I understood very little of it, I'll give it points for originality and style.Vigo chooses not to point the camera at Nice's attractions or sights, but instead focuses on the people, from the rich aristocrats on the beach, to the low-life sweepers. The whole point of this effort is to say that all sorts of people exist in Nice, but the people who come here are the rich Tourist scum, and besides, I just want to look at scantily clad babes.At least, I THINK was the moral.