This is the story of a great Valentine’s Day staged by Hepcat many years ago.

Hepcat once staged the most wonderful Valentine’s surpise. Part of the surprise was that he even did something at all—usually he’s a Valentine’s Day Scrooge, the guy who gets really put out with the whole idea of this Hallmark holiday. But that year he really rose above his own objections to it and planned something big. He told me that he was taking me somewhere but he wouldn’t say where. Ever curious, I kept asking. “You’ll ruin the surprise,” he said again and again.

My expectations rose sky high. Then he told me the location of where we were going — somewhere downtown on the far west side. Hmmm. I didn’t have a clue where he had in mind.

That night, we drove down the West Side Highway and parked on Varick Street near Houston. When we turned down a side street, I saw a small movie marquee in the distance. It said, “Grand Opening on Valentine’s Day. Now Showing: L’Atalante by Jean Vigo.”

I thought I was dreaming. This tiny, recently refurbished movie theater, then called the Soho Cinema, was playing my favorite movie of all time, L’Atalante, on their opening night. Made in 1934, this black and white french movie is the story of Juliette who marries Jean. She comes to live on his river barge along with a cabin boy and the strange old second mate Pere Jules. Soon bored by life on the river, she slips off to see the nightlife when they get to Paris. Angered by this, Jean sets off, leaving Juliette behind. Overcome by grief and longing for his wife, Jean falls into a depression and Pere Jules goes and tries to find Juliette. When he finds her she too is eager to return to the barge. Back together again, they resume life on the river.

It is a simple story told with grace and poetry. It may be one of the most romantic movies of all time. Jean Vigo had tuberculosis when he made it, and was dead just after its release. He was only 29, and had made only four films. A romantic until the end.

We were the only ones in the theater other than the usher and the popcorn guy. Sitting in our own private movie palace watching a treasure of French cinema, it was a Valentine’s Day impossible to forget