ANGELAKI journal of the theoretical humanities volume 12 number 2 august 2007

Gleaning [glanage] itself is unknown – is forgotten. The word is passe´. I was intrigued by people in the street picking up discarded food, and I wondered: what’s happening to the fields of wheat? Nothing there left to glean. So I visited the potato fields, and I found these heart-shaped potatoes, and it made me feel good. It made me feel that I was on the right track. Films always originate in emotions. This time it was seeing so many people combing the marketplace or rummaging through super- market trash bins for leftovers. Seeing them made me want to film them and, specifically, what could not be filmed without their consent. How can one bear witness without hindering them? s.d. chrostowska Agne`s Varda, ‘‘‘Gleaning’ the Passion of Agne`s Varda’’1 VIS -A' -VIS THE gestures and postures GLANEUSE gne`s Varda’s Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse A[] was filmed between September 1999 and March 2000 and released stroller, is a character of nineteenth-century later that year, marking film’s entry into the new French urban, and specifically Parisian, culture. millennium. Along with its companion piece, Les He has been well documented, given much Glaneurs et la glaneuse ... deux ans apre`s [The critical attention, and come to be adopted as an Gleaners and I: Two Years Later] (2002),2 it is a emblem of sorts by film theorists and film prime representative of a protean genre known as historians.5 The second figure, the glaneuse or the film-essay.3 Most importantly, however, the gleaner, once a fixture of the French rural, film offers an icon for digitally emancipated film peasant way of life, has not yet been the subject of and the consciousness of the image as manipu- such discourses. The third, the chiffonnier or lated (from the French manipule, or ‘‘handful, as ragpicker, belongs, like the flaˆneur, to the of grain’’).4 Parisian landscape, but in a rather different The logic of Agne`s Varda’s recent films invites capacity. My intention in this three-faceted a pair of comparisons. The terms to be compared comparison is to show that the glaneuse shares are the activities of flaˆnerie, glanage and with the chiffonnier several crucial traits that chiffonnage – or the figures of the flaˆneur, the distinguish her from the flaˆneur, and that these glaneuse, and the chiffonnier, all three historical relationships hold on the figurative level, speci- ‘‘types’’ in their own right. The first, the city- fically in relation to the medium of film.

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN1469-2899 online/07/020119^15 ß 2007 Taylor & Francis and the Editors of Angelaki DOI:10.1080/09697250701755092

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My argument is plain: Varda’s perspective in [...] [This focus] has allowed scholars to her two films about gleaning renders the extrapolate from the descriptions of the glaneuse’s modus operandi antithetical to flaˆn- flaˆneur to envision a historically specific erie and akin to the me´tier of the chiffonnier. If mode of experiencing the spectacle of the the flaˆneur – that modern, bourgeois male, often city in which the viewer assumes the position of being able to observe, command, and characterized as a distracted, egocentric urban participate in this spectacle all at the same spectator of capitalism – stands for classical, time. (28–29) narrative cinema, then the glaneuse can be seen as a postmodern cinematic figure, a keen Benjamin himself saw twentieth-century manifes- participant-observer (transcending the gender tations of flaˆnerie as an anachronism, surviving divide) of the rural and urban spheres alike. on borrowed time – although, as he tells us in Through Varda’s lens, the work of gleaning ‘‘Die Wiederkehr des Flaˆneurs [The Return of stands for documentary/essayistic, anti-consumer- the Flaˆneur],’’ the figure did make a comeback in ist, democratic, empathetic filmmaking. the twentieth century.8 Since Benjamin, The flaˆneur, as theorized by Walter Benjamin ‘‘[t]he figure and the activity appear regularly and taken up by his many commentators, was a in the attempts of social and cultural commenta- habitual, leisurely walker, taking in the cityscape tors to get some grip on the nature and in a whimsical, impassive, aleatory manner, in implications of the conditions of modernity and possession of himself but desperate to lose his post-modernity.’’9 In one of these interpretations, bearings. Reacting to boredom, attuned to the the flaˆneur’s observational stance, his propensity quotidian and the obscure, his desire – unlike the for watching city life go by, is seen as prefiguring tourist’s but like the voyeur’s – was aroused by and configuring the (apparently) neutral, prob- the patterns and flow of capital before his eyes. ing, roving eye of the motion-picture camera.10 His ambulatory urge, which could strike him at Thus, flaˆnerie was already cinematic before the any hour of the day, and his impulsive changes of birth of cinema as such, and (by way of its pace (depending on where his legs took him) inherent voyeurism) proto-cinephilic before the signified someone with too much leisure time on emergence of cinephilia. Indeed, more than his hands – hence the association of flaˆnerie with simply a precursor of cinematic form, the idleness. Flaˆnerie had little in common with experience of flaˆnerie mirrors the values and pedestrianism save for habitat and being incog- desires of consumer society later represented and nito. Whereas the pedestrian ‘‘wedged himself satisfied in narrative film. into the crowd,’’ the flaˆneur’s habitus and ‘‘art of That said, the above portrait of flaˆnerie and its strolling’’ required ‘‘elbow room,’’ which arcades relation to cinema culture is over a century old. 6 and boulevards amply provided. Finally, his Assuming it is not already obsolete, how has inhabiting of the city ‘‘split[s] [it] into its flaˆnerie changed? How do today’s flaˆneurs and dialectical poles. It becomes a landscape that flaˆneuses habituate themselves, where do they opens up to him and a parlour [an inte´rieur] that train their gaze, by what means do they 7 encloses him.’’ Abstracted in this way, the perpetuate their diversion? If recent discussions flaˆneur becomes something of a capitalist myth. are any indication, updated flaˆnerie is primarily Although ‘‘[ f ]laˆnerie has become so common a window-shopping, a shadow of its former state.11 term to describe urban spectatorship that it has The jury is still out on whether it may be carried begun to seem hollow,’’ writes Vanessa R. out only on foot in city streets, or also by vehicle, Schwartz, inside a mall, irrespective of social class. Although the flaˆneuse, the flaˆneur’s female it can still be used to describe the historically specific conditions of spectatorship in the counterpart, has joined the latter in theoretical consumer-oriented city that emphasizes mobi- argot (the issue being historical rights to the lity and fluid subjectivity and pleasure. activity of flaˆnerie), there are scarcely more than Benjamin understood the flaˆneur [...] as traces of the flaˆneuse’s historical visibility. If a ‘‘type’’ who exemplified urban spectators these seem like moot points, it may be because

120 chrostowska flaˆnerie’s cultural relevance is due for recon- Varda has shown that film, as a medium of sideration. Debate over the limits of its figurative such interaction, can make use of the experience hyperextension suggests that flaˆnerie as a con- and principles of glanage. We may wonder about cept may need to be retired to make way for the effectiveness of such translations and exten- another sociocultural genealogy. In particular, its sions, but Varda’s Glaneurs effortlessly performs ideological white-male pedigree poses problems the transitions from the literal to the metaphor- as a symbol for contemporary, diasporic, multi- ical modalities of gleaning. In the latter sense, cultural film art. Quite independently of this, gleaning means salvaging from oblivion. It should however, film today – in the midst of a digital be mentioned that Varda’s film is an intrepid, far- revolution and the resurgence of documentary- from-nostalgic reflection on transience and his- style filmmaking – deserves an emblem of torical/personal memory. Varda’s ‘‘objects’’ – its own. whether human, animal, animate or inanimate – Varda’s glaneuse is a discernible alternative, a represent, like the chiffons of the chiffonnier, not kind of ‘‘second sex’’ that lends itself to just things past but things forgotten, not merely theorization relative to the flaˆneur. Even the traces but the very debris of history.13 A though the masculine-plural ‘‘glaneurs’’ in clock emptied of its mechanism, one of Varda’s Varda’s title is gender-inclusive, gleaners were ‘‘finds,’’ is ‘‘my kind of thing. You don’t see time traditionally glaneuses, women gathering grain passing.’’14 (She places it on her mantelpiece, her left behind by reapers.12 These subtleties are lost reflection passing behind this improvised tableau in the English translation. As Varda explains, like a ghost.) Gleaning also has a mnemonic purpose: ‘‘And for forgetful me, it’s what I’ve In French we have the masculine and the gleaned that tells where I’ve been’’ (Glaneurs). feminine [forms of the noun ‘‘gleaner’’], so the Like the flaˆneur, the chiffonnier figures title Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse doesn’t prominently in the writings of Charles translate [into English] [...] We had to Baudelaire, inspiring Benjamin’s reflections in translate it as ‘‘The Gleaners and I,’’ which both his 1938 study of Paris and the 1927–40 emphasizes in a way the ‘‘I.’’ In the French, ‘‘glaneuse’’ refers to an anonymous female Passagen-Werk [Arcades Project]. Baudelaire gleaner. That little nuance [...] makes it more described the ragpicker as a creature living off important than me. (‘‘Gleaning Agne`s Varda’’) the leavings of the city and collecting rubbish, what had been disposed of, lost, or broken Apart from frugality, gleaning connotes humility, (Wohlfarth 151). In Benjamin’s reading, the a stance literally having to do with the ground category of Lumpensammler (German for chif- (Latin humus): bending down in the field in order fonnier) overlaps with that of Lumpenproletariat to pick up something discarded is no lofty act. A where Lumpen (rags) are concerned and with that further connotation is that the thing gleaned offers of Sammler (collector) in the activity of collect- no resistance; quite the contrary, it is not merely ing. (The latter is, in turn, contrasted with the ‘‘ripe for the picking’’ but positively ‘‘ready-to- flaˆneur with respect to the dominant sensory hand,’’ waiting to be taken, catching the gleaner’s experience: ‘‘The flaˆneur optical, the collector attention. Through an imaginative leap (which tactile’’ (Arcades Project 207).) The chiffonnier Varda invites us to take), everything ‘‘beckons’’ to is, nonetheless, easily distinguishable from the be noticed and offers itself as an object for collector – a member of the upper classes, who gleaning, a gift. These qualities contrast with the liberates ‘‘things from the drudgery of being flaˆneur’s upright mobility, his gestures elevated in useful’’ and ‘‘pits uselessness against bourgeois their elegance, his relative aloofness towards and utilitarianism,’’ but does so by investing in objectification of his urban surroundings, his love private ownership (Arcades Project 209; of commodities. Glanage, like flaˆnerie, signifies Wohlfarth 152). Meanwhile, the chiffonnier ‘‘is therefore as much a historical existence, a type, as the most provocative figure of human poverty. a mode of perception and interaction with one’s Lumpenproletarian in a double sense, both environment. dressed in rags and occupied with them’’

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(qtd in Wohlfarth 147). Positional ambiguity its revolutionary potential as nil, Benjamin seems to have been unacceptable to Marx and played up the affinities between the ragman and Engels, who in The German Ideology drew a fine the revolutionary) (Glaneurs). Gleaners are often line between the salvageable and the unsalvage- forced to cope with the law and, for the sake of able elements of society: the proletariat proper order, sometimes made official via registration and the poor. Poverty is the lowest level to which procedures required on the site of gleaning. Even the proletariat sinks, where it turns anti-revolu- then, however, they remain vulnerable, their tools tionary and ceases, for all intents and purposes, to clearly makeshift (as Varda notes, ‘‘I saw the be proletarian; it is a condition unique to the gleaners arrive. You can tell them from their rabble (ruinierte) proletariat (183). Marx subse- boxes, sacks and plastic bags which don’t look quently dismissed the unproductive, regressive, anything like the standard workers’ containers’’ dangerous raggedness of the Lumpenproletariat (Glaneurs)). Like ragpickers, gleaners also as ‘‘the dregs, the refuse and scum of all classes’’ demonstrate the usefulness of things discredited (Eighteenth Brumaire 63). The modern-day as waste, and, by the same token, their own Lumpenproletariat (prostitutes, beggars, the usefulness and productivity. Gleaning is never chronically unemployed, the homeless – legalized idle. At the same time, as one glaneur notes in or not, declared or undeclared) is regarded with a Varda’s film, ‘‘gleaners also discard’’ (Glaneurs). more sympathetic eye as the victim of socio- ‘‘We’re better off working in the fields than economic injustice or handicap. shoplifting,’’ another remarks. In this sense, Are, then, generic gleaners assimilable to the gleaning can be a form of sublation. While, Lumpenproletariat? The answer is complicated historically speaking, chiffonnage and glanage depending on whether we understand gleaning as share social origins (they are both, to differing broadly as Varda does15 or historically as the degrees, de´classe´), and both may harbour activity of female peasants, as well as whether we socialist dreams (Wohlfarth 149), not all modern take Lumpenproletariat in Marx’s original or in gleaners are poor and marginalized. Even among the current sense. Yet even the historical the poor ones one can see different forms of designation of glanage is open to debate: destitution. In Varda’s broad historical and although epitomized by the stooped female form functional interpretation, the connections of the nineteenth century, gleaning leftovers was between raggedness and gleaning run the gamut legally recognized in France as early as 1554, from the prosaic to the poetic. through an edict that allowed the poor, wretched, The above comparisons show that we can and otherwise deprived to glean post-harvest speak of an analogy between glanage and from sunup to sundown. This definition, unlike flaˆnerie as much as of the differently analogous that of the nineteenth-century glaneuse, would and homologous relation between glanage and certainly qualify glaneurs for the lumpenprolet- chiffonnage. Similar to literal and figurative arian ranks. While traces of traditional gleaning chiffonnage for Benjamin, glanage exists for still survive, a similar practice has also surfaced Varda on the metaphor–metonymy continuum. in the modern metropolis at the sites of waste She expands the seasonality of gleaning to include disposal. Because the categories of glanage not just the nature-bound cycle of traditional and chiffonnage overlap historically in posture gleaning but also the year-round human-made and gesture, and nowadays also in object and cycle of exchange and consumption of modern objective, the gleaning of leftovers and out of gleaning. privation is unquestionably lumpenproletarian. Varda, a figurative gleaner, is also an occa- As well, both the ragpicker and the gleaner sional literal gleaner – though not quite as literal share with the Lumpenproletariat the potential as some of the gleaners she encounters. Through for subverting the hegemonic logic of the glanage she is referring to her own work as part capitalist economy and property laws – a of the postmodern gleaner community, which she consequence of ‘‘gleaning [being] always on herself sets out to gather, name and construct. private property’’ (although Marx had calculated Apart from Varda, there are several other artists

122 chrostowska whose work involves gleaning and is explored in Varda’s own gleanings are incited by what is its terms by the filmmaker. A similar relation remarkable in being unremarked, and mediate existed between la bohe`me parisienne and between the impression and the copy. The chiffonnage in Baudelaire’s day. As Benjamin filmmaker releases images of herself – images observed, ‘‘The poets find the refuse of society on that effectively straddle the two domains – to the street and discover their heroic model in that underscore her role in this act of mediation. very refuse,’’ so that ‘‘everyone who belonged to When Varda discovers the heart-shaped potatoes, the bohe`me could recognize a part of himself in she narrates: ‘‘I was glad. I immediately filmed the ragpicker. Each person was in a more or less them up close and set about filming perilously obscure state of revolt against society and faced a with one hand, my other hand gleaning’’ more or less precarious future’’ (qtd in Wohlfarth (Glaneurs). Her stooping posture, grasping 151, 149). As Baudelaire the poet and Benjamin gesture and zooming in are a form of reaction the materialist historian were drawn to against the degradation of the copy vis-a`-vis the the figure of the chiffonnier, so Varda the original. We do not just see one unique spud; we filmmaker is drawn to that of the glaneuse. see many, and their image adorns the French Both ‘‘paradigms’’ involve members of the poster for Varda’s film. Her rapport, communion French artistic milieu being drawn lower, to the even, with what she films is foregrounded destitute, disturbing and dangerous, as models through her commentary and active participation. and modi operandi for their work. She animates her gleanings with an inexhaustible It would seem that the gaze typical of flaˆnerie curiosity and concern, even as she plays them off would leave remarkable objects, seen up close and against one another, letting them reverberate with capable of leaving a lasting impression, decon- the effect of spontaneous montage. textualized, stripped of their aura by the Varda’s thematic focus is on things that are observer’s voyeuristic desire, which then height- known for their transience (often because they are ens the reproducibility of both these objects and not worth holding on to). On one serendipitous their images. But decontextualization need not occasion, she finds a painted image that con- objectify; it can have a cleansing, restorative spicuously ‘‘belongs in this film’’: a medley of effect, which Benjamin terms ‘‘the emancipation postural motifs from the best-known French of object from aura,’’ as was the case in the paintings representing gleaners (Glaneurs). seminal work of Parisian photographer Euge`ne Another time, she asks for a painting kept in Atget.16 The aura of a thing could be described as storage to be taken outdoors in order to glean its its appearance as distant, untouchable, enshrined image. It is a vast oil canvas by Pierre Edmond in the moment of contemplation. Atget, however, He´douin depicting gleaners fleeing before a ‘‘looked for what was unremarked, forgotten, cast storm.17 Through Varda’s intervention, the adrift,’’ working against the exotic and the elements loose within the painting momentarily ambient, the intimate and the romanticized converge with those outside, where a storm is also (SW2 518). Varda’s work, on the other hand, gathering. As well, the painting functions as a conjoins these two domains of perception. backdrop to Varda’s project, whose humanist concern is underscored by the atmospheric [T]he difference between the copy [...] and coincidence.18 The resulting image – recording the original picture is unmistakable. the entirety of the painting within its frame Uniqueness and duration are as intimately before it returns to its recess in the museum’s intertwined in the latter as are transience and storeroom – is simultaneously original and copy reproducibility in the former. The peeling (in Benjamin’s sense). away of the object’s shell, the destruction of the aura, is the signature of a perception whose Here, as in other places in Varda’s film, the sense for the sameness of things has grown to mediation between the two perceptual domains the point where even the singular, the unique, seems ultimately to rely on multiple framing. is divested of its uniqueness – by means of its Perhaps the most a` propos example of this reproduction. (SW2 519) technique is her visit to an estate housing a

123 the glaneuse modest museum devoted to the chronophotogra- years later, on a photograph Varda took in 1954; pher E´ tienne-Jules Marey – the forerunner of the Salut les cubains is an elaborate photomontage of cinematographer, ‘‘ancestor of all movie makers’’ some 1,500 photos taken by her during a visit to (Glaneurs). She is shown the post where Marey’s Castro’s Cuba. Despite these retrospective (and stationary chronophotographic rifle, triggered by possibly sentimental) glances, Varda’s creative motion, once broke down (a de´compose´) the growth has not succumbed to stagnation and movement of animals.19 The camera then, taking repetition. The two recent films about gleaning its cue from Marey’s images, records a series of amount to an artistic breakthrough. As one critic his photographic sequences: it scans them put it, Varda’s reflection on the contemporary vertically, films several ‘‘film bits’’ in motion, relevance of glanage has enabled her ‘‘not only to and mimics the effect of fluid cinematic move- render visible economic practices most often ment by sliding across the frames. But, whether concealed, but also to invent a cinematographic because of the fragmentation of the sequence or practice’’ (Hale´vy 85). the gaps in motion as captured by Marey’s rifle, a It has been noted that some of Varda’s corresponding narrative is withheld. Thus, the narrative fiction films can be meaningfully segment becomes a homage to film’s ingenious interpreted in terms of flaˆnerie. For instance, beginnings. It is a case of coming full circle. the 1961 feature Cle´o de 5 a` 7 [Cle´o from 5 to 7] is said to explore the ‘‘possibility of a female ‘‘a gesture of survival, a posture on flaˆnerie’’ as a transformation through walking the margins’’20 and looking in city streets, and ‘‘how a woman walker – a flaˆneuse – lays claim to subjectivity’’ Varda’s cinematic aesthetic of glanage is dis- (Mouton 3).22 The prism of flaˆnerie fails, tinctive, intuitive, discreet. Coincidentally, Varda however, to shed light on the inventive camera- is also the first female auteur and a pioneer of the work and social focus in her twin essay-films, let . Her diverse oeuvre opens in alone on the old practice of gleaning. But one 1955 with La Pointe courte [The Short Point], need not despair, for nothing illuminates these which de facto inaugurated the nouvelle vague; it better than the films’ own broad conceptual basis. encompasses Left Bank group projects of the The story of glanage as told by Varda is equal 1960s (collaborations with and parts: fieldwork; mental activity (gleaning of Chris Marker); then comes into its own as images, impressions, emotions, information cine´criture,21 with the establishment of Varda’s (choses de l’esprit)); ethos of pragmatism, altru- production company and studio Cine´-Tamaris ism, modesty of means and ends, but also (1977), which facilitated greater creative control disruption and non-compliance; self-portrait (the over her films. In a career spanning nearly six titular glaneuse refers, of course, to the film- decades, she has directed several feature-length maker herself – the one travelling and gleaning and numerous short films, including dramas, film images) (Glaneurs). docudramas, documentaries, and cine-essays. Varda’s philosophy of gleaning is, therefore, Many are notable for their experimental qualities not purely aesthetic – it is ethical as well. It and foreground the interplay between artist stands for oppositional action: we are advised not and artwork, as well as between visual media to glean, because it refracts the self-interested (painting, photography, and film). forces of capitalism, because it disrupts the social Cine´vardaphoto (2004), for example, unites order of production, consumption, waste and its three films of various lengths: the 2004 Ydessa, disposal; yet, in spite or because of this, we do les ours et etc.[Ydessa, the Bears, and Etc.], the glean – as it is morally imperative to. Glanage 1982 Ulysse [Ulysses], and the 1964 Salut les presupposes compassion and care for what is cubains [Hi There, Cubans]. The project’s motto, gleaned not only because it gives itself to us, or ‘‘When Photos Trigger Films,’’ coincides with its because of its use-value as charity or subsistence, raison d’eˆtre. Ydessa ...was inspired by a but also because of its right to existence and photography exhibition; Ulysse is a meditation, memory.

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Varda’s filmic approach developed not with continuity between the nouvelle vague and but alongside the French New Wave, even if her Varda’s filmic output (Douchet 123). Her two starting point was the New Wave aesthetic and its films devoted to gleaning speak, however, to an reinvention of cinephilia. The nouvelle vague was unmistakable transformation of the New Wave the cinema of a generation: ambitious, existen- philosophie de la rue. The street sends an urgent tialist, anarchist, affected (positively and nega- socioeconomic message to which the filmmaker’s tively) by neo-bourgeois desires, prosperity, and ear is attuned: part road, part sidewalk, part futility (Douchet 123). Their youthful aimless- gutter, it is a giveaway of any society. To Varda, ness, foolhardiness and hedonism put a new face it reveals itself as the receptacle of waste – on flaˆnerie. New Wave flaˆneurs (if we can call symptom par excellence of consumerism run them that) were mobile, the motorcar at their aground – a condition the flaˆneur is too self- mischievous disposal. Transgression and provo- absorbed to take seriously. Varda’s Paris is a cation were the essence of their playfully place interesting not in itself but because of traces disillusioned or downright blase´ lifestyle. The left there by things fallen into desuetude, things city remained their main terrain. The street, too, unworthy of the tourist attraction but, none- became stylized: the unusual as a rule went theless, waiting to be acknowledged, rescued, unnoticed. Its boundless indifference to even revived. grotesque events and individual fate was the The characters engaged by Varda are never the limitation of la vie quotidienne, as was a certain real-life equivalents of New Wave heroes and forfeiture of individuality. heroines, sovereign and exhilarated by the The city street was the natural location for spectrum of possibilities. As an enthusiastic action in French New Wave films: it was both observer and master of understatement, Varda home and prison, world and province, changing is rarely content with lingering on the surface its demeanour with the possibilities, aspirations, play of things and ideas. In Les Glaneurs et la trials, failures, thrills, pleasures, and ironies of glaneuse she focuses on the seemingly mundane, the lives and loves of the young. If before films the plight of the subaltern, disenfranchised were shot exclusively on studio sets with obvious creativity, awareness campaigns and philan- dramatic or expressive value (city shots were thropy, and reveals the heterogeneous inner life deliberately picturesque or outre´), the nouvelle of the individuals she films. To Varda the vague filmed in the street, utilizing its ‘‘natural cine´glaneuse, the car is not an indispensable resources’’ (lighting, sound, traffic, crowd) to dramatic device but a means of transportation; it remake mise-en-sce`ne. In their films urban lets the filmmaker expand the territory of her landscape is seen merging with the action, gleaning beyond the city’s confines. Varda feels harmonized with the characters’ existential as drawn to the countryside as to the metropolis; states (Douchet 124). The New Wave’s image of in agricultural areas – vineyards as elsewhere in Paris, its birthplace, was not a postcard but a the provinces – the capitalist arm is also raking in snapshot. In this it aligned itself with flaneuristic the goods and leaving behind the scraps. There, perception; in Benjamin’s diagnosis, ‘‘[t]he great too, food is overlooked by machines, rejected reminiscences, the historical frissons – these are from trade if surplus or defective, and left to rot so much junk to the flaˆneur, who is happy to unclaimed by anyone save occasional gleaners. As leave them to the tourist’’ (SW2 263). The street Varda’s encounter with agricultural gleaning ceased being a Hollywood cliche´, envisioned from shows, when machines malfunction, gleaners the outsider’s point of view. In the wake of Italian have a field day. neorealism, the French New Wave developed a Varda’s cine´glanage is decentring – the veritable ‘‘philosophy of the street,’’ which it saw filmmaker’s subjectivity is a tentative aggregate as reflecting the status quo of a busy, bustling of her experiences, her gleanings.23 The process is bourgeoisie (Douchet 123). one of being confronted and transported with the A critical outlook and an ‘‘objective and objects (both mental and physical) gleaned in or unflinching’’ depiction of the street constitute a prior to the process of filming. This, in turn,

125 the glaneuse translates into a less willed, more contingent liver spots – acting in her stead. ‘‘I mean, this is trajectory. She gives free rein to detours and my project: to film with one hand my other hand. tangents (‘‘I permitted myself only digressions To enter into the horror of it, to find it indirectly related to the topic’’) in what is a extraordinary’’ (Glaneurs). Her grasping hand controlled experiment with chance (Director’s moving into the frame seems foreign, beastlike. Note). When asked about the circumstances and rationale of these ‘‘self-gleanings’’ she explains: The definition I gave to film-writing (cine´cri- ture) applies specifically to documentary films. [As for] the shots of myself, I was alone The encounters I create and the shots I take, and I wouldn’t ask a cinematographer to alone or with a team, the editing style, with take them; I mean I’d feel like I was being echoing or counterpointing, the wording of the narcissistic or something. And I was speak- voiceover commentary, the choice of music – ing to myself, as if taking notes, filming all this isn’t simply writing a script, or myself speaking to the little camera, directing a film, or phrasing a commentary. improvising the narration as I filmed one All this is chance and I working together hand with the other. And I felt a little 24 [...] pleasure at both filming and being filmed [...] Filming one hand with the other one – When once asked about the making of Les it closes a kind of circle. (GPAV) Glaneurs et la glaneuse, Varda replied: ‘‘Very little was planned. What was planned was to meet Varda does not only glean these unequivocal this or that person [...] I didn’t have a list of signs; she comments on them, her voice inter- gleaners handy. I had to find them’’ (GAV). mittent and poignant, seemingly self-indulgent, Throughout her eight months on the road she until it seamlessly rejoins the film’s central tried ‘‘to win their confidence, listen to them, concern: profligacy and complacency on a converse with them rather than interview them, massive scale. As her self-e´criture with ‘‘the and film them’’ (Director’s Note). Elsewhere, she hand of the other [la main de l’autre]’’ intimates expands on the role that luck played in the her own mortality, so her rendition of gleaning’s shooting schedule: ‘‘We never cheated when resurgence carries apocalyptic overtones, imbu- filming abandoned objects on the streets or ing the film’s objects with sadness and pain what the rummagers found in the garbage cans. (Be´noliel 62–63). We were overjoyed when by chance we found a Many of Varda’s gleanings happen in spaces painting of gleaning in a curios warehouse. And that are heterotopic: a flea market, a scrap-palace, we immediately filmed it’’ (Filming 4). ‘‘[W]hen a junk-haven, a trailer park, and museums. The I film,’’ she says about her filmic style, ‘‘I try to resulting visual and thematic opulence in the two be very instinctive. Following my intuition [...] films can be striking. This is a signature of Following connections, my association of ideas Varda’s entire output. She makes a range of and images [...] But when I do the editing, I am allusions to the visual arts and their trappings. strict and aim for structure’’ (GAV). Embedding frames, in the manner of baroque Because she does not neglect to turn the mises en abıˆme, is a pervasive device that calls camera on herself, Varda remains, as the attention to the act of viewing. In addition to the organizing consciousness, self-reflexive. Of this serialized images of motion that captivated habit, she says: ‘‘I let myself live in the film, and Marey, Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse includes a ‘let’ the film in. I thought that in making a film scene from Dovzhenko’s Earth (1930) showing like this I wouldn’t want to be separate from it, to gleaners at work. The filmmaker also travels to live in another world’’ (GPAV). Some of the most several museums to visit famous paintings of resonant images in Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse gleaners – the most iconic being Jean-Franc¸ois yielded by this self-inclusion are the close-ups of Millet’s from 1857. She even prompts the her own deteriorating bodily landscape – grey restoration of the He´douin canvas, giving it a hair being parted, wrinkled hands marked by new lease on life.

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As a glaneuse, Varda weaves a tapestry of Nevertheless, modern glanage is clearly not an idiosyncratic associations, pursuing an artistic expression of modern individualism (and dual- connection with this unique though elusive group ism) in the way flaˆnerie has been. It retains of people: workers in rubbish, scrap-diggers, redistribution and sharing as parts of its code. garbage-aestheticians, trash-ethicists. In the pro- It would seem that in an age of machine cess of layering her images, she empowers the harvesting, urbanization, and specialization, men and women in them, inviting them to make gleaning in the literal sense has become super- meaning, bringing out the human side of their fluous, and lives on only as metaphor. Varda, oddity. Her gleanings encompass scenes, agents, however, insists on the ironic currency of the and acts of gleaning: juice-brimming vineyards, designation, seeing urban scrounging as a freshly ploughed fields, outreach volunteers radicalized incarnation of the old custom: gathering unwanted crops, appointments with a ‘‘Gleaning might be extinct, but stooping has militant urban clochard (for whom gleaning is an not vanished from our sated society’’ (Glaneurs). ambulatory ide´e fixe, and who gives the capitalist The practice has spread from rural to urban economy a kick in the rear with his prominent environments, where it warrants a name other rubber boots25), discoveries of eclectic objets than the even more time-honoured ‘‘begging.’’ d’art composed from objets trouve´s – amalgams Although it still applies mainly to the poor and of miscellaneous, useless things. Also gleaned in homeless, it is a way of fending for oneself, of the two films are fresh oysters and figs, market making do with what remains rather than a produce, expired meat and dairy products, metal, reliance on alms or the mercy of others. postcards and brochures, res derelictae (things Doubtless, gleaning for a living is hard work, the ownership of which has been relinquished), and Varda’s empathy clearly extends to those bric-a-brac, souvenirs, opportunities, words, forced to glean, but it is her broad interpretation facts, stories ... of work that gives the concept of glanage such In the course of her exploration, glanage versatility, with waste as ‘‘the heart of our topic’’ emerges as something other than a hobby. As art (Glaneurs). it tends to be marginalized. Varda meets artistic Varda not only exposes the callousness and personalities from all walks of life and learns how underbelly of survival, and how little wherewithal their work is also sustained by methodical is in fact needed to cultivate one’s garden; she gleaning. To them, junk offers a ‘‘system,’’ a also continually juxtaposes these realities with the past which can be given a second chance in a opinions of the gainfully employed and the composition, a ‘‘cluster of possibilities’’ in moneyed, the primary producers and consumers ‘‘accommodating chance’’ (Glaneurs). In their of capitalist society: landowners, viticulturists, cases, glanage appears as an exercise resembling farmers, city workers, estate managers, pro- bricolage; indeed, some of Varda’s gleaners are prietors, curators, lawyers. Modern gleaners, in also self-described bricoleurs.26 whom she discovers a deeply critical socio- Even though it is Varda who sets the terms of economic and environmental awareness, philoso- glanage, and her exploration of it means phical or spiritual fraternity and continuity with continually experimenting with its boundaries, the past, embody a gathering ethos: a reaction she does not take the flexibility of these against waste as useless and harmful (and there- boundaries for granted. Can we categorize as fore against the very concept of waste), and gleaners both those who are destitute and those against the stigmatization of waste-users (whether who want for nothing? What about gleaning by choice or by necessity) by the skewed for pleasure? she asks. (Au fond, this is a moral priorities of the market economy. Varda invests question.) It should be said that not all forms much of her energy in looking at forms of local of glanage featured by Varda are strictly environmental consciousness; in the world of pro- communal: individualism has also made inroads environmental sustainability activism, gleaning is into gleaning, so that each gleans his or her own – the order of the day. She comes across a if not literally, at least in spirit. recycling/bricolage workshop for children and a

127 the glaneuse trash-art exhibit, both over-aestheticizing waste, reverses the kinesis of his gaze by moving from which appears ‘‘small, cute, clean and colourful,’’ the specific to the general), and for the wonder- very unlike the trash urban gleaners must sift ment owing to closer – at times quite intimate – through (Glaneurs). Varda is generally open to interaction with the things she encounters. Her different points of view, but it is evident where two gleaning films involve tactile contact and her true sentiments lie. prehensility. The most vivid images in this As she explores different avenues open to respect are the potato and highway sequences. organized forms of glanage, Varda also inquires In the first, Varda sees the curiously shaped into gleaning’s legality. The penal code is (officially ‘‘misshapen’’ and rejected) potatoes, consulted: a ‘‘lawyer in the field’’ is asked picks them up, and brings them home, filming about ‘‘gleaning rights,’’ a ‘‘lawyer in the streets’’ them ‘‘again and again’’ (Glaneurs). She monitors about ‘‘salvaging rights,’’ and a judge about her their decay in stages throughout the film. Her judgment on a case involving vandalism on store interactions with these symbolic growths do not, property (Glaneurs). Inevitably, she comes up however, lock her into a fetishistic relationship against the bitter reality of private ownership and with them (since they are not allowed to be the prohibitions, time restrictions, and formal- commodities); they instead undercut the subject/ ities gleaners have to endure to glean legally. object distinction as inflected by capitalism ‘‘Isn’t it a bit overregulated?’’ she asks an orchard (potatoes are, after all, the staple of the poor administrator. ‘‘Well, it’s either that or nothing at man’s diet). In the second set of images, shot on all.’’ Reflecting on her own work among other the road, Varda closes in and closes her hand on things, she says: ‘‘On this type of gleaning of large trucks that she is passing, thereby optically images, impressions, there is no legislation’’ ‘‘gleaning’’ them through the windshield. As (Glaneurs). This statement is, of course, less their size and cargo indicate, she is gleaning the and less true. To be sure, the multifaceted wheels of commerce. confrontation between glanage and authority Varda’s cinematic method is, in this but also accounts in part for her fascination with the in a more elementary sense, manual or, as she subject. puts it in an interview, ‘‘handmade’’ (GAV). She likens it ‘‘to artisan’s work, equivalent to cloth weaving and hand-sewing’’ (Oxtoby 31). cine¤ glanage: taking a look The keys to visual glanage (as, indeed, to Varda’s approach to making Les Glaneurs et la flaˆnerie) are spontaneity and improvisation – glaneuse is, thus, not only motivated by but itself transcending even what Varda calls cine´criture. also a form of gleaning. She uses the camera to In Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse, the cine´crivain glean things/images that might seem offhand, inscribes herself into the famille glaneur: her even a ‘‘waste of time’’ – were it not for Varda ceremonial gesture is posing with a sheaf of who retrieves, who does not let go to waste. wheat as the lone and noble glaneuse from the 1877 painting by Jules Breton. The scene, with It is true that filming, especially a documen- Varda standing against a cloth backdrop held tary, is gleaning. Because you glean what you up by museum staff, occurs five minutes into find; you bend down; you wander around; you the film. ‘‘There’s another woman gleaning in are curious; you try to find things out. But you this film; it’s me. I’m happy to drop the ears cannot push the analogy further because we of wheat and pick up my camera,’’ is her don’t just film the leftovers. Even though commentary, as she points her camera at the there is some analogy with the people whom society pushes aside. But it’s too heavy an offscreen camera filming her in an arresting analogy. (GAV) confrontation (Glaneurs). Most revealing of her intention are the reflexive sequences of her Varda the cine´glaneuse foregoes the flaˆneur’s own hands. On the surface, the formula is panoramic vision for the omitted details also simplistic: one hand gleans the other, one hand constitutive of landscapes (one might say she films the other gleaning.

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I have two hands. One holds a camera – the imagination. Glanage is a trope for transfigur- other one is acting, in a way. I love the idea ation (we become what we glean). Varda’s film that with these handheld cameras – these new renders – through looping, breakaway narrative digital things – very light, but, on the other and both holistic and fragmentary illustration – hand, very ‘‘macrophoto.’’ [...] I like the idea the energy and thrust of glanage as ethical that one hand would be always gleaning, the practice. In gleaning, aesthetics goes hand-in- other one always filming [...] The hands are hand with ‘‘ethical know-how.’’28 Instead of a the tools of the gleaners [...] of the painter, of the artist. (GPAV) system of normative rules and abstract judge- ment, the ethics of praxis as put forth by When we compare figurative flaˆnerie and Francisco Varela is a project of being in the glanage, we are fundamentally comparing tradi- world, of savoir-faire. It arises from conceptualiz- tional filmmaking, which bestows absolute pri- ing cognition as enaction (with the connotation of macy on the work of the eye and its objectives ‘‘bringing forth by concrete handling’’): as (visual representation, consumption, and enjoy- perceptually guided, embodied and situated (8). ment), with filmmaking which thematizes the Varela’s philosophy is apposite for under- ‘‘hands-on’’ process of making a film and whose standing humanity and its extensions: how the modus operandi is conceived via the sense of recognition of one’s ‘‘selfless (or virtual),’’ touch: image-taking by using portable, handheld mediated self becomes manifested in action equipment (not to be confused with any handheld (53). The camera, as a technological extension effect). simultaneously limiting and enhancing selected It was Marshall McLuhan’s belief that: functions and selective patterns of vision, produces a reality shift in the perceiver. It It’s always been the artist who perceives the becomes a conduit for action that, in turn, alterations in man caused by a new medium, modifies its use; like the manipulatory cameras, who recognizes that the future is the present, ‘‘[v]isual perception and motions thus give rise to and uses his work to prepare the ground for it regularities that are proper to this new manner of [...] We reverse the old educational dictum of perceptuo-motor coupling’’ (58). For Varda, it is learning by proceeding from the familiar to the added lightness of an unobtrusive camera that the unfamiliar by going from the unfamiliar to the familiar, which is nothing more or less propels her on a set of imaginative excursions, than the numbing mechanism that takes place during which she discovers an alternative mode of whenever new media drastically extend our perception, of taking in her surroundings, which senses.27 in turn leads her to navigate differently the waters of history, art, work, self, other, and contempor- An ‘‘extension and intensification of the eye,’’ the ary society. She sets up her film as a dynamic camera also works as an extension and intensifi- forum for critique, one that obscures the cation of the hand, manipulating things or the conventional dichotomies of the gaze and its way they appear, and registering signs of haptic object, the empowered and the disempowered. intelligence (57). The reconfiguration of film- Was it, then, Varda’s intention to engender an essayism which this conceptual shift affords is not alternative to flaˆnerie for cinema? What simila- just a logical outcome of using digital video rities and differences between the ‘‘types’’ of the technology or a capitalization on its novelty; it is, flaˆneur and the glaneuse can justify such an rather, Varda’s unique, instinctual take on the assertion? We have already some indication of technological change which leads her to explore what they may be. Over time, glanage has its potential for a new technique and dimension. become an activity of utilitarian, but also of If the gaze of the flaˆneur was prototypical of bohemian, ilk. While rooted in a resurfacing rural cinematic innovation, the take of the cine´gla- custom, modern versions of glanage emerge as a neuse is its by-product. fact of rural and urban landscapes alike. As I have tried to show, filmic gleaning is not Gleaning belongs to and can be found wherever primarily about aesthetics and the aesthetic people are marginalized, downtrodden, and

129 the glaneuse destitute – unlike flaˆnerie, which is historically indolence) (SW4 31, 22). Repulsed by the insipid linked to prosperity. Similarly to flaˆnerie, stagnation of domesticity, he looks at the public however, gleaning delights in buoyancy and arena as his existential home where solitude is spontaneity amidst busyness. Yet glanage still bearable – even if in the street he remains ‘‘a traces this state, at times circuitously, back to man apart’’; the place called home he finds nature. The empathy that characterizes both nauseating (SW4 19, 27; Tester 4). The cine´gla- diverges where their objects are concerned. neuse, by contrast, fills her dwelling with Flaˆnerie produces intoxication with crowds and souvenirs from her travels. She is comfortable commodities (and with crowds as commodities) to with domestic solitude, as if sharing it with which the flaˆneur surrenders and without which another. This is the message of the several shots his gaze would remain impossibly neutral (SW4 of the filmmaker’s apartment in both films.29 34). Yet (as is the wont of the intoxicated) his Home is where she brings her gleanings, where agency appears questionable and his ways auto- she takes stock of and assembles them. At the maton-like when compared to the glaneur, same time as she seeks contact with the outside, informed as glanage is by a penetrating empathy she is content to glean alone in the open field. In with a stark, unveiled social reality. both modes of experience, however, impulse and Unlike the flaˆneur, the cine´glaneuse does not flux – the ceaseless, unplanned mutability of transform the world at will and in toto, since she humdrum existence – play a major part. is herself subject to transformation. As docu- The obvious aesthetic pleasure of mobility (no mentarist-essayist, she is formally removed from doubt heightened by the novelty of such portable classical cinema: she does not seduce the viewer equipment), the attention to manual gestures with elaborate fantasies or sleights of hand but (variously communicated), the subject matter canvasses him or her with found images. Her itself, and the visual analogues and philosophical inquisitive corporeal presence in front of and metaphors drawn from it: these elements cohere behind the camera endows her films with an aura into the rarely acknowledged, intensely sensory of subjective honesty. Her conspicuous physical side of Varda’s filmmaking. It is this extra involvement in the image-seizing process evinces dimension, made available by her technique, cognition beyond that of distracted and anaes- which catalyses the original, ‘‘organic unity’’ of thetized spectatorship. Gleaning means having image, taker, and context: the image is eyed and your hands full; the glaneuse is compelled to grasped by a figure who is simultaneously work. The flaˆneur, meanwhile, is prone to director, cinematographer, producer, actor. leisure, an otiose seeker of meaning for himself Varda’s overarching embodied presence in Les and his art exclusively. Unlike the flaˆneuristic Glaneurs et la glaneuse is tied intimately to the compulsion to immerse oneself in the cityscape motion, rhythm, and objects that the hands and and, in this presumed invisibility, to ‘‘reap eyes command, so that it seems evoked, as much aesthetic meaning and an individual kind of as evoking, in virtually every take. existential security from the spectacle of the teeming crowds,’’ glanage – literal and figurative ‘‘ilike filming rot, leftovers, waste, – exchanges parasitism for symbiosis, for becom- mould’’30 (commercial value: zero?) ing the object of one’s perception, thereby rejuvenating personal expression in the visual Although moribund to younger generations, medium (Tester 2). irrelevant or discomfiting to the affluent, glean- A final area in which glanage and flaˆnerie ing endures. There are general signs and diverge is in their attitude towards solitude and countless social and aesthetic trends that suggest domesticity. The flaˆneur is uncomfortable with glanage may procure socioeconomic (if not domestic solitude, with being in his own company directly evolutionary) benefits, signalling that (SW4 27). He abandons himself in the crowd, the flaˆneur’s loafing may be out of step with the without which he stagnates (watching the crowd is times. Though many of Varda’s gleaned images his occupation, a form of accrediting his and ideas may strike one as not particularly

130 chrostowska recherche´, as objets trouve´s or just simply stuff, reactions (most notably the implicit, intimate the associations she makes frame these raw visual reference to her1991film ). materials, in their rawness and materiality, 3 The film-essay or cine-essay is a hybrid genre resonate as a remarkable cultural resource. The of non-fiction film forms, often subsumed under world of waste that Varda shows us is at once the category ‘‘documentary.’’ Notable French fil- multifarious and parsimonious. As a sentimental m-essayists include Jean-Luc Godard, Alain glaneuse appearing in the sequel to Les Glaneurs Resnais, and Chris Marker (with all of whom puts it, ‘‘I think that objects contain a part of us Varda collaborated). Film-essays are traditionally [...] There is a huge transfer in things that are open-ended and non-linear in structure and emphasize the subjectivity of the filmmaker/ lost and then picked up [...] things leaving narrator. wonderful traces’’ (Glaneurs ...deux ans apre`s). It is from this vast, constant traffic and 4 Varda’s two films were shot on a mini-DV turnover of material culture, of recycled thing- camera with the sporadic help of a small crew. images, that we may divine what is in store for 5 A representative bibliography of fla“ nerie in the future of film and of the image generally. cinema studies, most of it indebted to the writings Varda’s films on gleaning seem to have tapped of Benjamin, might include the following: Anne into the zeitgeist of technocultural transition. Friedberg, Window Shopping: Cinema and the More recent events have, however, reconfigured Postmodern (Berkeley: U of California P,1994) and the private and public spheres Varda negotiated ‘‘Les Fla“ neurs du Mal(l): Cinema and the with negligible legal obstruction in 1999–2000. Postmodern Condition,’’ PMLA 106.3 (1991): 419^31; Elizabeth Wilson, ‘‘The Invisible Fla“ neur,’’ New Left The encroaching order of policies and policing, Review 191 (1992): 90^110; Leo Charney and however, is not yet a fait accompli; it should not Vanessa R. Schwartz (eds.), Cinema and the be taken as an impediment to – and certainly not Invention of Modern Life (Berkeley: U of California as the inevitable end of – gleaning as Varda knew P, 1995), specifically the essays by Charney (‘‘In a it. The filmmaker who gleans is not only the new Moment: Film and the Philosophy of Modernity’’), artist of social conscience; she or Schwartz (‘‘Cinematic Spectatorship before the he is also an anthropologist of a Apparatus: The Public Taste for Reality in Fin-de- culture of reclamation – a culture Sie' cle Paris’’) and Miriam Bratu Hansen in which this wasteland is all (‘‘America, Paris, the Alps: Kracauer [and we have. Benjamin] on Cinema and Modernity’’); David Clarke, The Cinematic City (New York: Routledge, 1997); Anke Gleber, The Art of Taking a Walk: notes Fla“ nerie, Literature, and Film in Weimar Culture I am grateful to Professor Angelica Fenner and to (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999); Vanessa R. Kinohi Nishikawa of Duke University for their Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture comments on this paper. in Fin-de-Sie' cle Paris (Berkeley: U of California P, 1999); Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice (eds.), 1 Agne' s Varda, ‘‘‘Gleaning’ the Passion of Agne' s Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Varda,’’ interview (hereafter GPAV); Varda, Global Context (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001); Jennifer ‘‘Director’s Note,’’ The Gleaners and I Press Kit 3 M. Bean and Diane Negra (eds.), A Feminist Reader (hereafter Director’s Note). These and other in Early Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2002); translations from Varda’s interviews have been Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, modified. Architecture, and Film (New York: Verso, 2002); Grahame Smith, Dickens and the Dream of Cinema 2 The 2002 film, with a running time close to the (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2003); Maggie original, begins where the latter left off.Itdoes not Humm, Modernist Women and Visual Cultures: develop the theme of gleaning in a new way; Virginia Woolf,Vanessa Bell, Photography, and Cinema rather, it is a follow-up, taking up threads from (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2003). the previous project, revisiting its participants, examining its reception and repercussions. In it 6 Walter Benjamin, ‘‘The Paris of the Varda also addresses her own oversights and Second Empire in Baudelaire,’’ trans. Harry Zohn,

131 the glaneuse in Selected Writings, vol. 4, 3^92 (30). Hereafter 18 Another such foreboding moment occurs SW4. before Rogier van der Weyden’s altarpiece frag- ment of the Last Judgement (c.1450). 7 Walter Benjamin, ‘‘The Return of the Fla“ neur,’’ trans. Rodney Livingstone, in Selected Writings, 19 The chronophotographic mechanism recalls vol. 2, 262^67 (265).Hereafter SW2. the fla“ neur’s reaction: the way he ‘‘catches things in flight’’ (which ‘‘enables him to dream that he is 8 Benjamin’s essay draws on a 1929 book like an artist’’) (SW4 22). Spazieren in Berlin [On Foot in Berlin] by Franz Hessel in recognizing fla“ nerie in the capital 20 Be¤ noliel 62; my trans. during the Weimar Republic. In contrast to 21 The method is discussed, for example, inVarda’s Benjamin’s earlier studies of the subject, Hessel’s Varda par Agne' s et filmographie par Bernard Bastide. essays on Berlin ‘‘both articulate and illustrate a theory of fla“ nerie in the twentieth century’’ 22 Feminism inflects most of the critical writing (Gleber 63). about Varda’s films. Whether or not her films can be called feminist, her express intentions 9 KeithTester, introduction,The Fla“ neur1^21 (1). have not been to contribute to feminist cinema: 10 See Charney and Schwartz, Cinema and the see Carter. Invention of Modern Life. 23 Her brief interview with ‘‘anti-ego philoso- 11 There have been attempts to link it to recent pher’’ and psychotherapist Jean Laplanche echoes adventures in psychogeography via the this somewhat ‘‘reckless’’ethos. Situationist technique of the de¤ rive (drift), or 24 Varda, ‘‘Filming the Gleaners,’’ The Gleaners ostensibly aimless locomotion ^ more or less and I Press Kit 4. Hereafter Filming. ironic, if we consider the critical, subversive nature of the original project towards the‘‘society 25 Varda asks him his reasons for wearing such of the spectacle’’ in which the fla“ neur uncritically boots around the city: thrives. Yes, rubber boots have two advantages, on 12 Gleaning proper is not picking (or, for that this hostile ground they’re really good stuff. matter, plucking); Varda takes care to distinguish There’s a psychological aspect too, with my these forms of gathering. boots I’m like the lord of this town. All these idiots dump away, I come after them 13 Her interest occasionally mirrors that of and rake in the chips. (Glaneurs) Benjamin, who saw himself as the ragpicker of history: see Wohlfarth144. 26 In Deleuze and Guattari’s reading, bricolage is closer to a hobby, an amateur occupation that 14 Les Glaneurs et laglaneuse, 35 mm, 82 min.,Cine¤ may indeed become an art ^ though limited to Tamaris, 2000, DVD (French with English subti- the objects at hand (7).The disposition to bricolage tles), Zeitgeist Films, 2002. Hereafter Glaneurs ^ appears to be common to all those ‘‘types’’ who all English quotations from subtitles. work with salvage, whether they are themselves 15 While Varda’s selection includes traditional underprivileged or merely sympathizers. There is gleaners of both sexes, it also features people out a sense in which art that owes its technique to bri- of the loop of the wage-labour system, hoboes, colage is humbled by its low origins. In his study struggling single mothers, owners of vineyards, Wohlfarth illuminates the chiffonnier’s ‘‘ambitions farms, bars and restaurants, and those (often as a bricoleur’’ (149). because of their own meek station) who wish to 27 Marshall McLuhan, ‘‘The Playboy Interview: help others in dire straits. Marshall McLuhan’’ 56. Reprinted in The Essential 16 Walter Benjamin, ‘‘Little History of McLuhan, eds. Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone Photography,’’ trans. Edmund Jephcott and (New York: Basic Books,1995) 233^69. Kingsley Shorter, in Selected Writings, vol. 2, 507^ 28 FranciscoVarela’s term. 30 (518). 29 The interior of Varda’s house appears in both 17 Les Glaneuses fuyant l’orage [Gleaners Fleeing films. At one point, she finds a florid stain from a before the Storm] from1852.

132 chrostowska leak on her ceiling so enchanting that she immedi- Schwartz, Vanessa R. ‘‘Walter Benjamin for ately ‘‘frames’’ its reflection in a mirror. Historians.’’American Historical Review 106.5 (2001): 21^ 43. 30 Glaneurs. Tester, Keith (ed.). The Fla“ neur. New York: Routledge,1994. bibliography Varda, Agne' s (dir.). Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse [The Gleaners and I]. 2000. DVD. French with English Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. subtitles. Zeitgeist Films, 2002. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin.Cambridge, MA: Belknap-Harvard UP,1999. Varda, Agne' s (dir.). Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse ...deux ans apre' s [The Gleaners and I: Two Years Benjamin, Walter. Selected Writings. Vol. 2. Ed. Later]. 2002. DVD. French with English subtitles. Michael W. Jennings et al. Cambridge, MA: Zeitgeist Films, 2002. Belknap-Harvard UP,1999. Varda, Agne' s. The Gleaners and I Press Kit. Benjamin, Walter. Selected Writings. Vol. 4. Ed. NewYork: Zeitgeist Films, 2000. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA: Belknap-Harvard UP, 2003. Varda, Agne' s. ‘‘Gleaning Agne' s Varda.’’ Interview with Julie Rigg. ABC Arts Online 17 Sept. 2001. Be¤ noliel, Bernard. ‘‘La main de l’autre.’’ Cahiers du Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Available cine¤ ma 548 (2000): 62^63. 5http://www.abc.net.au/arts/film/stories/s424327. htm4(accessed1Nov.2005). Carter, Helen. ‘‘Agne' s Varda.’’ Senses of Cinema Sept. 2002. Available 5http://www.sensesofcine- Varda, Agne' s. ‘‘‘Gleaning’ the Passion of Agne' s ma.com/contents/directors/02/varda.html#b154 Varda: Agne' s Varda.’’ Interview with Andrea (accessed1Nov.2005). Meyer. IndieWIRE Mar. 2001. Available 5http:// www.indiewire.com/people/int_Varda_Agnes_010308. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: html4(accessed1Nov.2005). Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Robert Hurley et al. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,1983. Varda, Agne' s. Varda par Agne' s et filmographie par Bernard Bastide. Paris: Cahiers du cine¤ ma,1994. Douchet, Jean.The French NewWave.Trans.Robert Bonnono. New York: DAP,1999. Varela, Francisco J. Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition. Ed. Timothy Lenoir and Gleber, Anke. The Art of Taking a Walk: Fla“ nerie, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. Stanford: Stanford UP, Literature, and Film in Weimar Culture. Princeton: 1999. Princeton UP,1999. Wohlfarth, Irving. ‘‘Et Cetera? The Historian Hale¤ vy,Olivier.‘‘Glaner avec Agne' s Varda.’’ La Voix as Chiffonnier.’’ New German Critique 39 (1986): duregard14 (2001): 85^90. 142^68. Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Trans. Terrell Carver. London: Pluto, 2002. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. ‘‘Die Deutsche Ideologie.’’ Werke.Vol. 3. Berlin: Dietz,1969.5^530. McLuhan, Marshall. Interview with Eric Norden. Playboy Magazine (Mar.1969): 53^74.

Mouton, Janice. ‘‘From Feminine Masquerade to S.D. Chrostowska Fla“ neuse: Agne' s Varda’s Cle¤ o in the City.’’ Cinema 178 Montrose Avenue, Apt. 1 Journal 40.2 (2001): 3^16. Toronto Oxtoby, Susan. ‘‘Cine¤ varda.’’ Cinematheque Ontario Ontario M6J 2T9 Programme Guide15.2 (2005): 30^31. Canada E-mail: [email protected]