Jean Vigo (April 26, 1905 – October 5, 1934) was a French film director, who helped establish poetic realism in film in the 1930s and was a posthumous influence on the French New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Biography

Vigo was born to Emily Clero and the prominent Spanish/Catalan militant anarchist Eugeni Bonaventura de Vigo i Sallés (who adopted the name Miguel Almereyda - an anagram of "y'a la merde", which translates as "there's the shit"). Much of his early life was spent on the run with his parents. His father was strangled in his cell in Fresnes Prison on the night of 13 August 1917; allegedly the authorities were responsible. The young Vigo was subsequently sent to boarding school under an assumed name, Jean Sales, to conceal his identity.

Vigo was married and had a daughter, Luce Vigo (a film critic) in 1931. He died in 1934 of complications from tuberculosis, which he had contracted eight years earlier.