was premiered at the Cinémathèque française in March 1984, with a score commissioned from Raymond Alessandrini which incorporated three themes by Maurice Jaubert. Reception The film was subsequently shown at many film festivals and film societies, including the 2005 Giornate del Cinema Muto whose catalogue contained the following remarks: "... Antoine mixed professionals with actors taken from life, authentic people of the river, recruited together with their barge. Under his direction all act with discretion and simplicity. He sees the action from varied viewpoints of their life, using different cameras. Much material is shot in the environment encountered in the course of the journey of this 'river movie'. Often Antoine diverts his view from the people to regard the river, its banks, the landscape which passes in lateral tracking shots until it becomes itself a character, a silent witness to the drama: a diversion of the attention which serves to extinguish the incandescent dramatic matter. "... In September 1934, discussing L’Atalante in his role as a cinema critic, Antoine also referred to his own uncompleted film, which in some respects anticipated that of Jean Vigo. Modestly, without mentioning his own role, he wrote simply: 'In this genre I recall only Marcel Achard’s La Belle Marinière, and another story, from many years ago, Gustave Grillet’s L’Hirondelle et la Mésange, which was also set on a barge, on the journey to L’Escaut, between Antwerp and Bruges. At the time the work was judged too new, and consequently not commercial.'" The notes also quoted the judgment of the film director Bertrand Tavernier: “There are few films which espouse to the limit the sentiments of their characters, without concessions either to them or to the spectator. L’Hirondelle et la Mésange, which rejects theatrical effects, facile dramatization, everything that might spoil, in an arbitrary way, the telling of the story, seems to be born (or reborn) in each shot of the interior movement of the characters.” References External links 1920 films French drama films French silent feature films 1920s French-language films Silent drama films 1920s French films