The film became a favorite of the filmmakers of the French New Wave, whose films contain many allusions to Vigo's work. The French director François Truffaut fell in love with it when he saw it at the age of 14 in 1946: "When I entered the theater, I didn't even know who Jean Vigo was. I was immediately overwhelmed with wild enthusiasm for his work." Yugoslavian film director Emir Kusturica has said he is a big admirer of Vigo's work and describes Vigo as a poet. This admiration is best shown in Kusturica's "Underground" (1995), where the underwater scenes are very reminiscent of those from "L'Atalante". Other films to pay tribute to "L'Atalante" include Bernardo Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris" (1972), Leos Carax's "Les Amants du Pont-Neuf" (1991), and Jean-Luc Godard's "In Praise of Love" (2001).