October 7, 2014 (Series 29:7) Agnés Varda, CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7 (1962, 90 min)

Directed by Agnès Varda Written by Agnès Varda Produced by Georges de Beauregard and Carlo Ponti Music by Michel Legrand Cinematography by Paul Bonis, Alain Levent, and Edited by Pascale Laverrière and Janine Verneau

Corinne Marchand ... Florence, 'Cléo Victoire' Antoine Bourseiller ... Antoine Dominique Davray ... Angèle Dorothée Blanck ... Dorothée Michel Legrand ... Bob, the Pianist José Luis de Vilallonga ... The Lover Loye Payen ... Irma, la cartomancienne Renée Duchateau Lucienne Marchand ... La conductrice du taxi Serge Korber ... Plumitif (the lyricist) Robert Postec ... Le docteur Valineau Eddie Constantine ... L'arroseur Jean-Luc Godard ... L'homme aux lunettes noires / Actor in silent film là Varda” (TV Series documentary), 2010 “P.O.V.” (TV Series ... Anna, la jeune fille blonde / Actress in silent film documentary), 2008 The Beaches of Agnès (Documentary), 2000 The Gleaners & I (Documentary), 1995 L'univers de Jacques Demy (Documentary), 1995 One Hundred and One Nights, 1993 Agnès Varda (director) (b. Arlette Varda, May 30, 1928 in Les Demoiselles Ont En 25 Ans (Documentary), 1988 Le petit Brussels, Belgium), has 50 directing credits, many of them shorts amour, 1986 You've Got Beautiful Stairs, You Know*, 1985 (indicated by *), some of which are 2011 “Agnès de ci de là Vagabond, 1981 (Documentary), 1977 One Sings, the Varda” (TV Series documentary, 5 episodes), 2010 “P.O.V.” Other Doesn't, 1976 Daguerréotypes (Documentary), 1972 Last (TV Series documentary), 2008 The Beaches of Agnès Tango in Paris (adaptation: French dialogue), 1970 “Nausicaa” (Documentary), 2007 Vive les courts metrages: Agnès Varda (TV Movie), 1965 Le Bonheur, 1962 Cleo from 5 to 7, 1955 La présente les siens en DVD* (Video documentary), 2005 Cléo de Pointe Courte. She also edited 10 of her films: 2011 “Agnès de 5 à 7: souvenirs et anecdotes*, 2003 Le lion volatil* 2002 The ci de là Varda” (TV Series documentary), 2006 Quelques veuves Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (Documentary), 2000 The de Noirmoutier (Documentary), 2005 Les dites cariatides bis* Gleaners & I (Documentary), 1995 L'univers de Jacques Demy (Video documentary), 2004 Cinévardaphoto (Documentary), (Documentary), 1995 One Hundred and One Nights, 1993 Les 2004 Ydessa, the Bears and etc.* (Documentary), 2003 Le lion Demoiselles Ont En 25 Ans (Documentary), 1988 Le petit amour, volatil*, 2002 : Two Years Later 1985 Vagabond, 1985 The Story of an Old Lady*, 1982 Ulysse*, (Documentary), 2000 The Gleaners & I (Documentary), 1988 1981 Mur murs (Documentary), 1977 One Sings, the Other Jane B. for Agnes V., and 1985 Vagabond, and was Doesn't, 1976 Daguerréotypes (Documentary), 1970 “Nausicaa” cinematographer for 9 of them: 2011 “Agnès de ci de là Varda” (TV Movie), 1967 (Documentary), 1962 Cleo (TV Series documentary), 2010 “P.O.V.” (TV Series from 5 to 7, 1958 Diary of a Pregnant Woman*, 1958 O saisons, documentary), 2008 The Beaches of Agnès (Documentary), 2005 ô châteaux (Documentary), and 1955 . She also Les dites cariatides bis* (Video documentary), 2002 The has 41 writing credits, some of which are 2011 “Agnès de ci de Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (Documentary), 2000 The Varda—CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7—2

Gleaners & I (Documentary), 1993 Les Demoiselles Ont En 25 Store, 1972 Stadium Nuts, 1971 The Five Crazy Boys, 1968 La Ans (Documentary), 1968 Huey* (Documentary), and 1963 Salut cage de Pierre (Short), 1964 Le rond-point des impasses (Short), les Cubains* (Documentary). and 1962 Cleo from 5 to 7.

Alain Levent (cinematographer) (b. September 15, 1934 in Paris, France—d. August 28, 2008 (age 73) in Paris, France) has 82 cinematography credits, including 2007 “Le voyageur de la Toussaint” (TV Movie), 2006 “The Rainbow Warrior” (TV Movie), 2003 The Kite, 2002 Jugement d'une femme, 2002 Roues libres, 2000 Marty's World, 1992 Le mirage, 1990 Contretemps, 1987 The Man Who Wasn't There, 1980 “Le vol d'Icare” (TV Movie), 1978 Lover Boy, 1976 Dracula and Son, 1976 The Acrobat, 1974 Le cri du coeur, 1973 Naked Sex, 1973 Far West, 1972 Franz, 1969 My Uncle Benjamin, 1967 A Choice of Killers, 1967 Far from Vietnam (Documentary), 1966 The Nun, 1966 Devil at My Heels, 1965 The Queen of Spades, 1964 The Thief of Tibadabo, 1964 Cover Girls, 1962 Cleo from 5 to 7, 1961 Gala (Short), and 1960 Photo souvenir (Short). Michel Legrand (music) (b. Michel Jean Legrand, February 24, 1932 in Paris, France) won 3 Academy Awards: 1984 Best Jean Rabier (cinematographer) (b. 1927 in Paris, France) has Music, Original Song Score and Its Adaptation or Best 67 cinematography credits, some of which are 1991 Madame Adaptation Score for Yentl (1983) which he shared with Alan Bovary, 1990 “Night of the Fox” (TV Movie), 1990 Dr. M, 1988 Bergman (lyrics) and Marilyn Bergman (lyrics), 1972 Best , 1987 Masques, 1986 , 1982 Music, Original Dramatic Score for Summer of '42 (1971), 1969 “La danse de mort” (TV Movie), 1982 “Les affinités electives” Best Music, Original Song The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) for (TV Movie), 1980 The Proud Ones, 1978 , 1976 the song “The Windmills of Your Mind” which he shared with The Twist, 1976 Death Rite, 1975 Dirty Hands, 1975 Pleasure Alan Bergman (lyrics), Marilyn Bergman (lyrics). He has 194 Party, 1973 Wedding in Blood, 1970 Cold Sweat, 1969 This Man composer credits, some of which are 2013 Max Rose, 2006 The Must Die, 1969 , 1968 Les Biches, 1967 The Legend of Simon Conjurer, 1995 Aaron's Magic Village, 1995 Champagne Murders, 1965 , 1964 The Umbrellas of Les enfants de Lumière (Documentary), 1995 Les Misérables, Cherbourg, 1963 Bay of Angels, 1963 Ophélia, 1963 Bluebeard, 1995 L'univers de Jacques Demy (Documentary), 1994 Ready to 1962 , 1962 Cleo from 5 to 7, 1961 Wise Guys, Wear, 1993 Les Demoiselles Ont En 25 Ans (Documentary), and 1961 Les fiancés du pont Mac Donald ou (Méfiez-vous des 1991 Dingo, 1990 Fate, 1990 Flight from Paradise, 1989 “Il lunettes noires) (Short). était une fois... la vie” (TV Series, 26 episodes), 1986 You've Got Beautiful Stairs, You Know (Short), 1984 Secret Places, 1983 Corinne Marchand ... Florence, 'Cléo Victoire' (b. December Yentl, 1983 Never Say Never Again, 1982 Best Friends, 1982 “A 4, 1937 in Paris, France) appeared in 60 films and television Woman Called Golda” (TV Movie), 1981 Bolero, 1980 Atlantic shows, including 2004 Innocence, 1997-1999 “Un homme en City, 1980 The Mountain Men, 1977 The Other Side of Midnight, colère” (TV Series, 6 episodes), 1998 “Sous le soleil” (TV 1977 Gulliver's Travels, 1976 Ode to Billy Joe, 1976 Gable and Series, 10 episodes), 1994 Le parfum d'Yvonne, 1986 Attention Lombard, 1973 The Three Musketeers, 1973 F for Fake bandits!, 1984 “Louisiana” (TV Movie), 1983 “The Crime of (Documentary), 1973 “Le temps de vivre, le temps d'aimer” (TV Pierre Lacaze” (TV Movie), 1981 “Henri IV” (TV Movie), 1979 Mini-Series, 40 episodes), 1972 Lady Sings the Blues, 1972 Coup de tête, 1975 Hot Acts of Love, 1972 “Le cygne” (TV Portnoy's Complaint, 1971 “Brian's Song” (TV Movie), 1971 Movie), 1972 Travels with My Aunt, 1972 The Artless One, 1971 Summer of '42, 1970 Wuthering Heights, 1969 The Picasso “Une autre vie” (TV Series), 1970 Borsalino, 1966 Man from Summer, 1968 Ice Station Zebra, 1968 The Thomas Crown Nowhere, 1962 Liberté I, 1962 Cleo from 5 to 7, 1962 The Seven Affair, 1967 , 1966 A Matter of Resistance, Deadly Sins, 1961 Lola, 1957 Give Me My Chance, and 1955 Cut 1964 Band of Outsiders, 1964 The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, throat. 1963 Le joli mai (Documentary), 1962 The Empire of Night, 1962 Vivre Sa Vie, 1962 Cleo from 5 to 7, 1961 A Woman Is a Antoine Bourseiller ... Antoine (b. July 8, 1930 in Paris, Woman, 1961 Lola, 1958 Sinners of Paris, 1957 The Tricyclist, France—d. May 21, 2013 (age 82) in Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, and 1955 Visages de Paris (Documentary short). France, due to complications following surgery) appeared in 19 films and television shows, including 2013 Le grand Paul Bonis (cinematographer) has 35 cinematography credits, retournement, 2012 “Le sang de la vigne” (TV Series), 1988 among them 2003 “La maîtresse du corroyeur” (TV Movie), Three Seats for the 26th,1980 A Bad Son, 1976 Moi, Pierre 1997 “Mauvaises affaires” (TV Movie), 1993 Si le loup y était Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma soeur et mon frère...,1966 (TV Movie), 1993 “Les noces de Lolita” (TV Movie), 1992 The War Is Over, 1966 Masculin/Féminin, 1962 Red Culottes, “Pognon sur rue” (TV Movie), 1988 Alouette, 1982 Les sous- 1962 Cleo from 5 to 7, 1961 Famous Love Affairs, 1958 Diary of doués en vacances, 1980 Parano, 1980 The Under-Gifted, 1979 a Pregnant Woman (Short), 1957 Le jeu de la nuit, and 1955 Cut Subversion, 1979 Roberte, 1975 Vincent mit l'âne dans un pré (et throat. s'en vint dans l'autre), 1974 Sadsacks Go to War, 1973 The Big Varda—CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7—3

Dominique Davray ... Angèle (b. Marie-Louise Gournay, (Documentary), 1976 “Six fois deux/Sur et sous la January 27, 1919 in Paris, France—d. August 16, 1998 (age 79) communication” (TV Mini-Series, 6 episodes), 1968 Film-Tract in Paris, France, of natural causes) appeared in 97 films and n° 1968 (Short), 1956 La sonate à Kreutzer. television shows, among them 1983 “Père Noël et fils” (TV Movie), 1982 Les Misérables, 1981 “Messieurs les jurés” (TV Anna Karina ... Anna, la jeune fille blonde / Actress in silent Series), 1979 “La nuit de l'été” (TV Movie), 1978 “Émile Zola film (b. Hanne Karen Blarke Bayer, September 22, 1940 in ou La conscience humaine” (TV Mini-Series), 1976 The Wing or Copenhagen, Denmark) appeared in 79 films and television Thigh?, 1974 Going Places, 1968 The Troops get Married, 1965 shows, some of which are 2008 Victoria, 2003 I, Cesar, 1996 La tête du client, 1965 How Not to Rob a Department Store, “Chloé” (TV Movie), 1990 The Man Who Wanted to Be Guilty, 1963 Any Number Can Win, 1962 How to Succeed in Love, 1962 1987 Last Summer in Tangiers, 1987 Last Song, 1985 Treasure Cleo from 5 to 7, 1962 Swords of Blood, 1961 The Busybody, Island, 1984 Ave Maria, 1976 Chinese Roulette, 1976 “Le 1961 Fanny, 1960 Wasteland, 1958 Women's Prison, 1958 voyage à l'étranger” (TV Movie), 1974 Bread and Chocolate, Inspector Maigret, 1957 Young Girls Beware, 1955 To Catch a 1972 The Salzburg Connection, 1971 The Wedding Ring, 1970 Thief, 1954 Touchez Pas au Grisbi, 1953 Act of Love, 1953 The Time to Die, 1969 Justine, 1969 Laughter in the Dark, 1968 Companions of the Night, 1952 Casque d'Or, 1950 Just Me, 1949 The Magus, 1967 The Stranger, 1967 The Oldest Profession, Cage of Girls, 1948 The Secret of Monte-Cristo, and 1942 1966 Made in U.S.A, 1966 The Nun, 1965 , 1965 Wicked Duchess. The Camp Followers, 1965 Alphaville, 1964 All About Loving, 1964 Band of Outsiders, 1963 Scheherazade, 1962 Vivre Sa Vie, 1962 Cleo from 5 to 7, 1962 Maid for Murder, 1961 A Woman Is Dorothée Blanck ... Dorothée (b. February 24, 1934 in Aichach, a Woman, 1959 Pigen og skoene (Short). Bavaria, Germany) appeared in 44 films and TV shows, including 2009 , 2001 Tanguy, 1994 La lumière des étoiles mortes, 1970 Donkey Skin, 1969 A Gentle Woman, 1967 Rasputin, 1964 The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1963 Vice and Virtue, 1962 Cleo from 5 to 7, 1962 Il segno del vendicatore, 1961 , 1961 Lola, and 1958 Diary of a Pregnant Woman (Short).

Jean-Luc Godard ... L'homme aux lunettes noires / Actor in silent film (b. December 3, 1930 in Paris, France) has directed 117 films and television shows, most of which he also wrote, including 2014 , 2014 3D, 2010 Tribute to Éric Rohmer (Short), 2008 Journal des Réalisateurs de Jean-Luc Godard (TV Short), 2001 In Praise of Love, 1993 Les enfants jouent à la Russie, 1988 Closed (Short), 1987 Keep Your Right Up, 1987 King Lear, 1986 Meeting Woody Allen (Documentary short), 1985 Hail Mary, 1980 Every Man for Himself, 1978 Comment ça va?, 1976 (Documentary), 1972 , 1968 A Film Like Any Other, 1968 Sympathy for the Devil (Documentary), 1967 Weekend, Agnès Varda:From World Film Directors, Volume II, Edited 1967 , 1967 Far from Vietnam (Documentary), 1967 by John Wakeman. The H. W. Wilson Co, NY, 1988 Two or Three Things I Know About Her..., 1966 Masculin Varda, Agnès (May 20, 1928- ), French director and Féminin, 1965 Pierrot le Fou, 1965 Alphaville, 1964 Une Femme scenarist, was born in Ixelles, Belgium, the daughter of Eugène Mariée, 1964 Band of Outsiders, 1963 Contempt, 1962 Vivre Sa Jean Varda, an engineer, and the former Christiane Pasquet. Her Vie, 1961 A Woman Is a Woman, 1960 Breathless, 1959 All the mother came from Sète, a small seaport in the south of France Boys Are Called Patrick (Short), 1958 “” near Montpellier, and during the war the family lived there on a (Documentary short), and 1955 (Short). He boat. After attending the Collège de Sète, Varda completed her also edited 59 of his films, and was narrator of or actor in 42 education at the Lycée Victor-Duroy in Paris and at the Sorbonne more. In addition he produced 21 films and television shows, where she received a bachelor’s degree in literature. The move to including 2014 Khan Khanne (Short), 2006 Vrai faux passeport Paris, she recalls, was “truly excruciating” and left her with “a (Documentary), 2006 Ecce Homo (Short), 2004 Moments choisis frightful memory of my arrival in this grey, inhuman, sad city.” des histoire(s) du cinéma (Documentary), 2004 Prières pour Classes at the Sorbonne struck her as “stupid, antiquated, Refusniks (Short), 1998 Adieu au TNS (Short), 1997 Inside/Out, abstract, scandalously unsuited for the lofty needs one had at that 1996 “Espoir/Microcosmos” (TV Short), 1996 “Le monde age,” while her fellow students were sufficiently unfriendly that comme il ne va pas” (TV Short), 1996 Plus Oh! (Short), 1994 she stayed close to acquaintances from Sète for some time. She at JLG/JLG: Self-Portrait in December (Documentary), 1992 first intended to become a museum curator and studied at the L'enfance de l'art (Short), 1990 Metamorphojean (Short), 1987 École du Louvre before switching to the Vaugirard school of King Lear, 1980 Every Man for Himself, 1978 Comment ça va?, photography. In 1951, when Jean Vilar (another native of Sète) 1977 “France/tour/detour/deux/enfants” (TV Mini-Series launched the Théåtre National Populaire, he hired Varda as the documentary, 12 episodes), 1976 Here and Elsewhere TNP’s official photographer, a post she retained for ten years. As Varda—CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7—4 the theatre became better known, so too did her photographs, and introduces this element my making the young man and his wife she began to receive photo-journalistic assignments that took her abstract figures, nameless and without individuality, speaking a all over France and to Germany, England, and elsewhere. non-naturalistic and literary kind of dialogue. She wrote this At this point, although some of her Parisian friends were dialogue, she says, “with a desire for complication of the style interested or involved in filmmaking, Varda knew little about and simplification of the characters. We are concerned with an cinema and says she had seen no more than twenty movies by the abstract couple, we don’t really know who they are, what they time she was twenty-five. In this state of ignorance she wrote her are doing, where they are going later. It was not that which first scenario, “just the way a person writes his first book. When interested me.” I’d finished writing it, I thought to myself: “I’d like to shoot that La Pointe Courte was written, directed, and produced script,’ and so some friends and I formed a cooperative to make by Varda, photographed by Louis Stein, and edited by Alain it.” Even then, she says, she “had the feeling…that the cinema Resnais. It was, in Varda’s words, “hand-made” in her own was not free, above all in its form, and that annoyed me. I wanted apartment, from the scenario to the editing (on a rented to make a film exactly as one writes a novel.” For her, the machine): “I listened to the music I loved, I continued to plant process of “finding my way”—as a woman above all—was my flowers, with the idea that the kind of life I had chosen, that instinctive: “Because I am not at all a theoretician of feminism, I this house where I was living, I needed them to function.” Most did all that—my photos, my craft, my film, my life—on my critics agree that Sylvia Montfort’s overly theatrical performance terms, my own terms, and not to clashed with the documentary do it like a man, not like a sobriety of the other story and man.” some maintain that Varda, trained La Pointe Courte as a still photographer, gives more (1955) is a full-length feature attention in this novice work to set in the small fishing village composition within the frame than of that name in the south of to the sequence of shots. The film France, not far from Sète, and is nevertheless visually beautiful telling two separate stories. One and startlingly original, and it has concerns the struggle of the been claimed as a nouvelle vague local fishermen (who are played picture several years ahead of its by themselves) against the time. economic domination of the big And indeed it does combines; the other is about a satisfy many of the criteria later young man (Philippe Noiret) used to identify the New Wave— who comes home with his low-budget filming outside the Parisian wife (Sylvia Monfort) in a last attempt to save their studio system, on location, using nonprofessional actors. The failing marriage. The two stories unfold side by side, combination of documentary and fictional material and the counterpointing each other but never merging. It is significant deliberate distancing effect were also adopted by some of the that Varda derives this structure not from the cinema but from nouvelle vague directors. What distinguishes Varda’s film from literature—from William Faulkner’s The Wild Palms, which is the work of Godard, Truffaut, and the other New Wave made up of two stories printed in alternate chapters. filmmakers associated with André Bazin’s influential journal Varda says: “I tried to establish the relationship between Cahiers de Cinéma, is that it is the product of a cinematic people and things. The hero’s theme is wood: his father was a intelligence shaped not by the movies themselves but by marine carpenter. Wood is his natural element. He is most literature and the plastic arts, especially painting and himself within the wooden frame of a boat—which is both matrix photography. The Cahiers directors were film addicts before they and cradle. For the heroine, the theme is iron: winch, rails, train. became filmmakers, and it was a pardonable exaggeration when They belong in different realms: and this is their key Roger Leehardt claimed that they discovered Shakespeare problem….Fishing implements—utilitarian objects to the through the films of Orson Welles. In any case, the Cahiers fishermen—are to this couple instruments of death, black circle was immediately impressed by La Pointe Courte; Bazin corrosive. Thus the décor is by turns positive for the fishing wrote that it was “a miraculous film. In its existence and its community and menacing for the leading characters, spiked with style.” For Truffaut, it was “an experimental work, ambitious, torture. For them, it is as though things were charged with honest, and intelligent.” psychoanalytic purpose: at the beginning of the film, when their Attempting to divide into manageable parts the welter of isolation is at its height, objects are of the first importance. The new talents that constitute the nouvelle vague, critics have couple move in a world of coldness. As the film nears its end, so dubbed Varda and her friends and associates the Left Bank this world changes and things give way to people.” Group, after the riverfront in Paris where they all live. It is a The film also embodies the concept of verfremdung, cosmopolitan area long associated with the literary and artistic usually translated as “alienation”—a dramatic theory and avant-garde, social non-conformity, and left-wing politics—as technique of which Brecht is the most famous exponent. It much a state of mind as a geographical location. The most signifies a deliberate attempt to distance the spectator from what prominent members of the Left Bank Group are Varda herself, he being shown so that, instead of identifying emotionally with , and , who has emerged as its central the protagonist to the point where he “loses himself” in the play, figure. . Armand Gatti. And Jean Cayrol are also he retains his objectivity and his critical faculties. Varda associated with the group, whose members are mostly older, Varda—CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7—5 more widely cultured, more interested in formal problems, and but she “constructed the experience as it might be for a woman of more politically conscious than the Cahiers directors are or were. the district….Opéra Mouffe is a film about panic. At bottom a They also share a reluctance to be lumped together in anything so tender film. What has been called its cruelty comes from the Procrustean as a school or movement. Varda will go no further strength of its feeling.” She made it as her contribution to the than to concede that: “We have in common a certain way of 1958 Brussels Experimental Film Festival, where it won the prize thinking, a certain complicity….I often have the impression of of the International Federation of Film Clubs. sharing with Resnais the same sort of plastic vocabulary and In 1962 Varda received backing for her second feature sometimes with Marker the same desire to amuse myself, a from Georges be Beauregard, whose Paris-Rome Films had certain way of seeing funny things, a…rather detached way of produced Godard’s À Bout de soufflé two years earlier. The talking about them.” resulting film Cléo de cinq à sept (Cleo From Five to Seven), is For his part, Resnais denies that they have anything at an account of ninety crucial minutes in the life of a spoiled and all in common, “apart from cats.” However, it is well known that beautiful young pop singer (Corinne Marchand)—ninety minutes he was reluctant to take on the editing of La Pointe Courte during which she is awaiting the results of a medical test that because it was no nearly the film that he wanted to make may show she has cancer. Terrified by a fortune-teller’s warning himself—and its structural similarity to , of a major change in her life, Cléo leaves her elegant white made five years later, is beyond apartment and the selfish and dispute. It was Resnais who trivial life it contains and wanders nagged Varda into acquiring a through Paris from the Rue de cinematic education: “When he Rivoli to the Salpêtrière Hospital. was editing…[La Pointe Courte], On the way she encounters a party he kept saying: ‘H’m, this bit’s of carnival revelers whose like Visconti.’ ‘Mm, this piece exuberance underlines her reminds me of Antonioni,’ until I loneliness and fear, briefly visits a got so fed up with it all that I went movie theatre showing a silent along to the Cinématèque to find comedy, watches a street out what he was talking about.” entertainer who swallows live La Pointe Courte is a key frogs, and everywhere sees film in the history of the New evidence of violence and Wave and the Left Bank Group in alienation. These experiences of particular, as it is in Varda’s own work, where the use of parallel indifference and cruelty are followed by a chance meeting with a story-lines, abstract characters, and personified objects, as well young soldier that seems to promise a deeper relationship than ad the overriding influence of the visual arts, are consistent the casual affairs she has known, and the hospital report when features. According to Varda, the film “hit like a cannonball she receives it, gives her additional grounds for hope. Cléo’s because I was a young woman, since before that, in order to journey across Paris is also a spiritual journey, and we see her become a director, you had to spend years as an assistant….In grow, under the threat of death, from unthinking superficiality to fact it’s a film that had very few viewers, and its real success was the beginnings of real perception. not so much as an object of culture but as a family snapshot: the Varda wrote the film herself, as she always does, and pleasure of seeing one’s mother or one’s boat on the screen.” was given an entirely free hand by the producers. She had Jean Financially La Pointe Courte was a total failure, and for the next Rabier as her photographer, Bernard Evein as a designer, and a seven years Varda had to content herself with documentary score by Michel Legrand. (The latter, who also appears as a shorts, beginning with two publicity films commissioned by the composer in the movie, wrote the music for Les Parapluies de French tourist office. Neither was the sort of routine travelogue Cherbourg and other films by Jacques Demy, whom Varda that might have been expected. In O saisons, o chåteaux, the married in January 1962.) Screen time in the film equals real classic beauty of the Loire chateaux is set off against the time—that is, an incident which that in reality would last three extravagant and ephemeral creations of the French fashion minutes occupies three minutes in the film, with no elisions, so designers, paraded by young models against the old stone, and all that the spectator shares Cléo’s ordeal in its entirety. The this elegance is burlesqued in a sort of ballet of chateaux secondary characters—Cléo’s maid, her lover, her friend, various gardeners. Du côté de la Côte, about the Riviera, pointedly musicians, and the young soldier—are well and convincingly contrasts the teeming beaches of the masses with the private drawn, and Paris is very beautifully and knowledgeably gardens of the rich—unspoiled but exclusive Edens. photographed, seen afresh as Cléo sees it. In this film, as in La The short that followed, Opéra Mouffe (1958), is one of Courte Pointe and indeed in the documentaries, the relationship Varda’s own favorites among her films. It is a documentary between people and their environment is given great about the Left Bank streetmarket on the Rue Mouffetard and the prominence—“If we open people up,” Varda once said, “we slums around it, seen from the specialized viewpoint of a should find landscapes inside.” pregnant woman (which Varda at that time was). There are shots A critical and popular success (and one that later (some of them taken with a concealed camera) of other women in became a New Wave cult film), Cléo received the Prix Méliès, pregnancy, of children playing in the streets, of old people worn and Varda was inundated with offers to make what she describes down by poverty and anxiety; others of naked lovers and of as “more pictures about dying blonde singers.” In spite of this, images (gourds, doves) related visually or symbolically to Varda was unable to find a producer for her own project, La pregnancy. ”I myself had a very happy pregnancy,” Varda says, Mélangite, an ambitious feature conceived in 1960 and still Varda—CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7—6 unrealized. She had continued to work from time to time as a intellectually pretentious, and were alienated by Varda‘s refusal photographer, visiting China and other countries, and in 1963 she to individualize her characters. Financially it was a failure, and went to Cuba. Returning with several thousand photographs, she once again Varda made no more features for several years. She edited fifteen hundred of them into a “homage to Cuba”—a contributed an episode to Chris Marker’s Loin du Vietnam (Far movie paradoxically made up of still photographs in a montage from Vietnam, 1967), but this was never used. cut to the rhythms of Cuban dance music. Salut les Cubains When Demy went to the United States in 1967 to direct received the Bronze Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1964. Model Shop for Columbia Pictures, Varda accompanied him and Le Bonheur (Happiness, 1965) is one of the best-known made two shorts in the Bay Area, one, Uncle Janco (Uncle and most controversial of Varda’s films. A young carpenter lives Yanco, 1968), about the uncle she discovered there, and the an idyllic life in the Paris suburbs with his wife, whom he dearly other, Les Panthères noirs, (The Black Panthers, 1968), about loves, and his delightful children. After a while he falls in love the black militant organization based in Oakland. For her, these also with a girl who works in the post office (Marie-France were “personal and political documentaries; I could have filmed Boyer). He proposes that his loving family should be extended to them anywhere.” She was, nonetheless, fascinated with include her, thus increasing the supply of happiness. To him, Hollywood and wanted to make a film in Los Angeles. When nothing could be more natural, but his wife, a more Columbia Pictures refused to give her final editing rights for a conventionally possessive person, finds the notion so traumatic film called Peace and Love, she dropped the project (“I didn’t that she drowns herself. After her death the mistress replaces her, see why I had to have fewer right in Hollywood than in France”) and life goes on as happily as and found independent backing before. This outcome proved for Lion’s Love, a film she deeply shocking both to made outside the commercial conventional moralists and to studios “in total freedom.” some feminist and political Lion’s Love (1969) activists, who regarded the film was in fact about an avant- as a sellout to escapist and garde woman director who goes decorative fantasy. to Hollywood to make a movie. As in La Pointe The heroine is played by Courte, the principal characters Shirley Clarke, and the friends are left deliberately she stays with are Viva (one of undeveloped and unexplained— Andy Warhol’s superstars) and not individuals but exemplary James Rado and Jerome Ragni figures invented to illustrate a (coauthors and stars of Hair). thesis, or at any rate a According to Varda, Viva, speculative essay on the Rado, and Ragni were eager to possibilities for human work with her because they too happiness that might exist “wouldn’t accept the rules of beyond the nuclear family.… the game and had been swept Varda has said that she aside.” Richard Roud wrote wanted Le Bonheur “to arouse the same feelings I get looking at that the film’s real subject is filmmaking itself, “and therefore old vacation snapshots, and, in another way, from impressionist when Shirley Clarke is supposed to attempt suicide and cannot paintings. Critics were reminded of the films of Renoir and those go through with the scene, it is not at all surprising that Varda of Jacques Demy, Varda’s husband (her photographer, Jean jumps in and acts the part herself. And when Viva complains (to Rabier, also shot Demy’s Les Parapluies de Cherbourg). The camera) at the end of the film that her dream of being in a real carpenter and his family are played by members of a real movie has once more been frustrated, it is neither inappropriate family—the television actor Jean-Claude Drouot, Claire Drouot, nor startling. What did startle—even shock—American and their children. Le Bonheur won many awards, including the audiences was the confrontation between the four characters of Prix Delluc, the Silver Bear at the Berlin Festival, and the David the film and the assassination of Robert Kennedy [seen on Selznick Award. television]. But like Varda’s earlier films, Lion’s Love is about In her first film, Agnès Varda had tried to show how that too: the contrast and contradiction between pubic events and objects take on a different significance depending on the mind of private viewing.” As for the film’s reception in her own country, the observer. This process is carried much further in Les in the words of Jacques Siclier, “France, which never Créatures (The Creatures, 1966), an examination of the understands Agnes Varda’s insatiable curiosity for what is relationship between reality and fiction in which human beings contemporary, didn’t like it that much.” But Varda, true to form, are subjected to the transforming power of the creative said, “It gave me lot of pleasure to work on the margins with imagination. A science fiction writer (Michel Piccoli) and his these marginal people, even if Lion’s Gate wasn’t a bit hit.” wife (Catherine Deneuve) come to an island in Brittany where After that, Varda’s career went into a temporary decline. they hope to recover from an automobile accident that has left She helped script Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris him physically and mentally scarred and her dumb. She is (uncredited) but made no more films of her own for five years, expecting a child and he is pregnant also with a new novel. during which time her son, Mathieu , was born. In 1975 came …Henri Langlois thought the move “pure Méliès in its visual Daguerréotypes, a full-length television film about the ingenuity and wit but many reviewers found it confusing and shopkeepers of Rue Daguerre, where Varda lives, continuing the Varda—CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7—7 idea of Opéra Mouffe, it was, in her words, neither reportage nor feature that won the Golden Lion at the 1985 Venice film documentary but “neighborhood cinema (cinéma du quartier), festival. “I had an urgent desire to make this film,” she told the collective myth of people anchored in the past, in their interviewers,” and I wanted to conserve my energy. I gave natural tendencies.” Soon after this film, she began to work on a myself two weeks to find a producer, no more. With funding new feature, for which she created her own production company, from Jacques Lang, the French Minister of Culture, and from a Ciné-Tamaris. The result was L’Une chante, l’autre pas. (One French television station (and later from Britain’s Channel 4), Sings, the Other Doesn't, 1977), an intimate portrayal of two she began work with a two-page plot summary, inviting actress women’s lives over a decade of personal and social Sandrine Bonnaire to play the part of the teenage drifter Mona. change….Along with Le Bonheur, Une chante was the most Her basic idea was “to tell the story of a wandering character in widely discussed of Varda’s films to date, and one of them most relation to those who see that character pass by, more or les seen admired, receiving the Grand Prix at the Taormina Festival. by them….All of us understand loneliness, and I wanted to make In 1979 Varda returned to Los Angeles to start a short a film about someone who pushed that to total rebellion….I film on a local news item; the intended two-week visit led to a didn’t want to adopt Mona, to pretend I knew everything about six-month step-contract to work with an American coscenarist, her. I wanted to examine her behavior, not explain why she was which in turn expanded into a two-year stay in the beach the way she was.” community of Venice, California. Out of this experience, which As Mona’s itinerary was established in the region of Varda characterizes as her double exile (from France and Nimes in the south of France, Varda, who’d scouted the locations Hollywood alike), came a pair of films presenting Varda’s herself, wrote local people into the story—truck drivers, garage perception of Los Angeles from two angles. Mur Murs (, mechanics, migrant workers, relics of the counter-culture, actual on the Wall, 1980) is the external view, a documentary drifters. Other characters were fictionalized and acted by reportage on the street murals of Los Angeles: “Who paints professionals—Madame Landier (Macha Méril), a tree them, who pays for them, who looks at them, how this city, conservationist who (as Varda had done) picks Mona up in her which is the film capital of the world, reveals itself without any car; her student Jean-Pierre(Stephan Freiss) and his wife tricks, with its inhabitants, by its whispering walls (murs (Yolande Moreau)….”The whole film is one long traveling murmurant).” The second shot,” says Varda, alluding to the film, Documenteur (1981), as repeated views of Mona the punning title implies marching, right to left. “It’s cut in (documentaire/documentary pieces, the pieces are spread apart, plus menteur/liar), is the and the ‘adventure’ set in place.” counter-documentary, the Varda showed a 140- impossible inner view minute version of the film to reconstructed through the twelve people whom she then story of a woman writer presented with a twelve-page (Sabine Mamou, Varda’s film questionnaire, asking them about editor) attempting to rebuild the plot, the structure, what they her life with her son (Mathieu would cut, condense, reedit, and Demy, Varda’s son) after the so forth—not, she stressed, to do departure of her lover….. American style market research Over the next few but to determine “the common years Varda continued denominator of perception.” A experimenting with shorts. second test version, at 125 Ulysse (1982) is a twenty-minute “reverie” as one critic minutes, was shown two weeks later to a different audience, after described it, that has as its point of departure a photograph that which Varda cut the film down to the final 106 minutes (she then Varda had taken twenty-five years earlier and the recollections of used the outtakes to make her own trailer). “Where my film is those who were involved—Varda herself, a child named Ulysses, involved,” she concedes, “I‘m an extremist.” now thirty years old, and a grown man, now sixty. The film The story created by this process begins with the delighted viewers at Cannes in 1983 and received a César for the discovery of Mona’s frozen body in a ditch and then moves best short documentary the following year. By this time Varda through the series of chance encounters that filled the last weeks had also put together Une minute pour une image (One minute of her life. A web of interconnections gradually emerges—the for One Image, 1983), a related collection of 170 two-minute maid whose boyfriend burgles the house where Mona camped for films recording how people respond to photos of or by a night is sacked by Aunt Lydie’s nephew, who is also Madame themselves. In 1984 she made two more shorts, a twelve-minute Lanier’s student; David, the drifter with whom Mona spends a “cine-poem,” Les Dites-Cariatides (The So-Called Cariatids) few days crosses her path again when he sets fire to the squalid and a half-hour treatment of family life….Varda then began communal residence that is her last stop; the migrant worker who working on a one-hour film which she first called À saisir (Grab promises to take her in and can’t is mirrored by another who Onto It), because, as she later explained, “it was a film to grab finds her body. But in all this, Mona is never the hub of the onto, still wandering.” interconnections, merely the hapless, if not innocent creature The film that she eventually made, inspired in part by trapped by them. As the story moves along, the audience is her encounters with young drifters, was Sans toit ni loi inevitably involved, implicated, left feeling as incapable of (Vagabond), literally “Without roof or law”) the full-length reaching Mona as the other characters in the film do, and as Varda—CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7—8 frightened by the extremity of her alienation. Her death, initially the second female to receive the award after Kira perceived as grotesque, by the end of the film comes as a relief, Muratova.[16] bringing an end to suffering for her and those around her (including the audience). Varda quotes San toit ni loi was an immediate success. Critics praised its structure and rhythm, its stunning integrity, the authenticity of “My working process I like to call cinéciture: I take my time to the situations, and the acting, above all the profoundly disturbing dream and to reflect. I do not follow theories but rather trust performance by Sandrine Bonnaire, who received a César. perceptions and feelings.” Varda’s response was characteristically down-to-earth. “It took me much more time to put this film together than just being a “In my films I always want to make people see deeply. I don't director….I raised the money, I took the risk, and now I’m want to show things but to give people the desire to see.” paying it back. After all this is finished, then maybe I can breathe and think of something else.”… “What I want to do is to involve each person in the audience She points out that filmmaking for her is women’s which I do by being involved myself.” work: “The way that I had set up an artisanal system of filmmaking made me think [later]…that I had found the “I am always very precisely implicated in my films, not through equivalent of the activity of those women who weave cloth, or do narcissism but through honesty in my approach.” hand sewing, those women of another time who were creative in those crafts that were in “I need images, I need women’s domain.” She said of representation which deals in L’Une chante that she had no other means than reality. We intention of making a militant have to use reality but get out film—“I’d like to see and direct of it. That's what I try to do all films which warm people, make the time.” them coherent, aware, and content.” “You know, the boundaries between contemporary art and From Wikipedia cinema are so rigid. It's Agnès Varda (born 30 May unbelievable. The film critics 1928) is a French feminist film don't know my artwork and the director and professor at the art world doesn't know my European Graduate School.[1] films.” Varda, Agnès and Liza Her movies, photographs and art Bear (Interviewer). installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues and "Interview." in: Interview Magazine. 2009. (English). social commentary — with a distinct experimental style. Left-bank is a term invented by Richard Roud. In fact, Chris Awards and accolades Marker, Resnais, and I, who had our hearts on the left politically, For the 1985 documentary-style feature film lived on the real Left Bank in Paris. But since that time, I like to Vagabond/Without Roof or Rule she received the branch out. I don't like to repeat myself. [phone rings] Hello? Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival. Radio Canada? Can you give me 10 minutes? [covering 2002 Agnès Varda was the recipient of the prestigious mouthpiece] My film is opening in Canada on the 13th. No? I'll French Academy prize, René Clair Award.[9] stay on the line then . . . The tool of every self-portrait is the On 4 March 2007, she was appointed a Grand Officer of the mirror. You see yourself in it. Turn it the other way, and you see National Order of Merit of France.[10] the world . . .(reading a note from Béar) My friend here reminds In 2009 The Beaches of Agnès won the best documentary me that Sartre said, "Hell is other people." Well, I don't agree film of the César Award.[11] with Sartre. I like others. My film could use Gertrude Stein's On 12 April 2009, she was made Commandeur de la Légion title, Everybody's Autobiography.” Varda, Agnès and Liza Bear d'honneur.[12] (Interviewer). "Interview." in: Interview Magazine. 2009. In May 2010 Varda received Directors' Fortnight's 8th (English). Carosse d'Or award for lifetime achievement at the Cannes Film Festival.[13] “I should say nothing! I’m through with it! I hate to repeat 22 September 2012 Varda received an honorary degree from myself all the time. I cannot invent totally. I cannot say Liège University Belgium.[1] something different to one person and then another. I cannot On 14 May 2013, Varda was promoted to Grand Cross of make it totally different each time, you know. I say so much in the National Order of Merit of France.[10] the film and so much even in the press kit!” Varda, Agnès and On 22 May 2013, Varda received the 2013 FIAF Award for Sheila Heti (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Believer. October her work in the field of film preservation and 2009. (English). restoration.[14] On 10 August 2014, Varda received the Leopard of Honour “When I did Cléo, I thought, I have to work with time. We feel award at the 67th Locarno Film Festival.[15] She was time differently when we are suffering or are in pain or we are Varda—CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7—9 waiting for something. So subjective time became the subject for me—plus the duration of the time of the film that the spectator Molly Haskell,, “Cléo from 5 to 7.” (Criterion Notes) perceives.” Varda, Agnès and Sheila Heti (Interviewer). Agnes Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7, the first fully-achieved feature "Interview." in: The Believer. October 2009. (English). by the woman who would become the premiere female director of her generation, dazzled when it opened, and looks even more “I waited for each film to become important for me. If I had no timely today in its tackling of the fashionable subject of female ideas for a film, I didn’t do a film. So I made not that many films identity as a function of how women see and are seen by the for fifty-four years of working. I think I did fifteen long features world. Its appearance in 1962 signaled Varda’s participation in and fifteen documentaries, or something like this, which is very the collective burst of talent that made the early sixties one of the little when you think of people making a film every year. Some most exciting and creative periods the cinema has ever known. people have done fifty or sixty films.” Varda, Agnès and Sheila All the rejuvenating forces of French cinema were coalescing in Heti (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Believer. October 2009. a rapidfire succession of new names, new films, the “New (English). Wave”: 1962 was the same year of husband Jacques Demy’s La Baie des anges, a year after Truffaut’s Jules and Jim and “At that time I was down because I was so much hoping—and so Resnais’ , two years after Jean-Luc was Jacques—that we could go on forever. We were Godard’s Breathless and three after ’s Les disappointed more than anything. More than separated, we were cousins and . More than any of the others, one disappointed. I think it’s something I can tell. The story of a feels in Cléo the influential shadow of Godard (he actually couple is always very fragile, especially over more than thirty appears in a film within the film) in the heady exhilaration at years. People know it’s not easy, and even though you have breaking narrative rules, in the use of hand-held camera, and in strong feeling and desire and endless love, it doesn’t always the featuring of Paris itself as a character in the film. happen. Then we came back together back in Paris.” Varda, Varda didn’t share the film-buff (and theoretical Agnès and Sheila Heti (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Cahiers du cinéma) roots of Truffaut and Godard; rather, her Believer. October 2009. (English). background as a photojournalist, then documentarian, expresses itself in the styling of striking images upon which the rush of “So I tried to find a language for the film—not just telling news-of-the-day events are constantly intruding. The story is of a stories. I picked the Picasso painting because it said more than I woman, a spoiled pop singer named Cléo (Corinne Marchand) could explain.” Varda, Agnès and Sheila Heti (Interviewer). suddenly confronting cancer—and, what for her is even worse "Interview." in: The Believer. October 2009. (English) than death, the possibility of ugliness and disfigurement. Varda’s photojournalistic instincts are apparent in the way she turns Paris “You are always in the world. Even in Vagabond. I am not on the into a hall of mirrors—windows and faces that reflect the heroine road, I am not eating nothing. But in a way we all have a Mona. back to herself. We follow as she wanders through different We all have inside ourselves a woman who walks alone on the sections of the city in the two hours preceding a dreaded doctor’s road. In all women there is something in revolt that is not appointment, where she will get her final test results. It is an expressed. I’m interested in people who are not exactly the odyssey that, like so many French films, is about the double middle way, or who are trying something else because they delight of watching a beautiful woman against the backdrop of cannot prevent themselves from being different, or they wish to the most beautiful of cities, but it is also a spiritual journey from be different, or they are different because society pushed them blindness to awareness, and from self- absorption to the away.” Varda, Agnès and Sheila Heti (Interviewer). "Interview." possibility of love. In showing us a woman whose sense of self is in: The Believer. October 2009. (English). formed not by inner desires and drives but by her need for approval in the eyes of others, Varda is confronting the vanity of “I think people should be different. I love people who don’t go a beautiful woman as well as her beauty. by the rule that you have to be careful because you’re old, you In the first scene, the superstitious Cléo receives grim have to do this and that, you have to eat this and that. I try to do news from a fortune teller, with the figure of death appearing in nothing. I drink rosemary when I have a lot of work to do. People the Tarot cards. The seer assures her the card can also mean take coffee, they take speed, whatever. I take rosemary. My transformation, but Cléo is not a woman who can deal with the company is called Ciné-Tamaris, which is rosemary. That’s my idea of aging, maturing, or dying. As she leaves the apartment in speed. Hot water and herb. But it’s nice to think that we have in shock, Varda uses jump cuts to fragment her descent on the ourselves the energy. It’s somewhere, but it’s sleeping staircase, a Duchamp-like cubist sequence that expresses her sometimes. I try to wake it up when I need it.” Varda, Agnès and splintering sense of self. The same sense of disorientation is Sheila Heti (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Believer. October captured in the vérité camera that follows her through the 2009. (English). crowded Parisian streets, often eliciting stares from passers-by. Cléo gazes at herself in store windows, meets a woman companion at a café, buys a hat, and returns with the friend to her apartment. On the trip home, their taxi is accosted by students noisily demonstrating; on the radio we hear news of the Algerian war, of Kennedy and Kruschev. The real world and the interventions of style are equally important to a director who is a fascinating and paradoxical blend of social consciousness and a hyper-aesthetic approach. Cléo’s apartment, a fairy-tale white- Varda—CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7—10 on-white lair with a canopied bed, is a stage setting for the singer devoted to the challenge of capturing or reconstituting the as star of her at-home theatre. First she “receives” a briefly experience of “real time.” Agnès Varda’s 1961 Cléo from 5 to alighting lover, then her musicians (the composer is played by 7—an account of an hour and a half in the life of a normally the film’s composer, Michel Legrand) who bring out a carefree young woman who is gravely awaiting a medical mischievous side to Cléo. diagnosis—is one of them, but it dispenses with the single- Bland and doll-like for camera-take concept that the first portion of the film, she Hitchcock cleverly faked (and suddenly thrusts off the wig she that Sokurov would heroically has been wearing, becoming maintain); it is as jazzily more human in the process. She photographed and busily edited asks to be alone, another as any more conventional significant step, as she goes off narrative film. Rather, Varda again into the streets. With this seizes the kind of immediacy symbolic gesture, she becomes and tension associated, at the more inquisitive, more aware of start of the sixties, with the the world outside her. She cinema verité documentary spends time with a woman movement and uses it to create friend, watches a jokey silent a new form of fiction. Unlike film, and in the Bois-de- traditional story films, which Boulogne, encounters a chatty skip everywhere in both time serviceman (Antoine and space, Varda gives us a Bourseiller) whose intellectual gauntlet: every second piling curiosity disarms her. He has no idea who she is, and in his up, every step traced out. And she picked the best possible site engaging company, she is taken outside herself, gradually for this gauntlet walk: the Left Bank of Paris is preserved for us entering into a world of real human exchange. in all its early sixties vibrancy and diversity. Indeed, Varda once In a lovely series of moments that echoes Murnau’s described the film as “the portrait of a woman painted onto a great streetcar scene in Sunrise, she and her soldier take a long documentary about Paris.” bus ride through Paris on their way to the hospital. It is a stunningly scrupulous, exact film, in space as well The tension between a superficial high-gloss beauty and as in time—so much so that a viewer can draw a precise map of a dryer and deeper grounding in life marks all of Varda’s works, Cléo’s path and consider touristically re-creating her journey, sometimes ambiguously as in Le Bonheur, sometimes fancifully down to the last second, in the Left Bank as it exists today. as in Les Créatures. One Sings, the Other Doesn’t, the feminist (Varda’s only cheat, in fact, is to have titled it Cléo from 5 to 7, anthem and bonding picture, is perhaps her most political film, rather than from 5:00 to 6:30.) But if the film were only a and—surprisingly for such an overt “message” movie— one of virtuosic formal exercise, or a cleverly choreographed stroll her most enduring, while Vagabond, the 1985 film starring through a city, it would probably not have endured as the Sandrine Bonnaire as an unrepentant drifter who refuses to remarkable, affecting testament that it is. At least since her short present herself as a female object and eludes all claims of men L’opéra Mouffe (1958), Varda has devoted a large part of her art and law, is the masterpiece toward which the remarkable Cléo to conveying not just what the physical world looks and sounds from 5 to 7 points. like but how it feels, how we process it internally in our mind, Through an arresting use of Paris as both visual body, and heart. That internal feeling then informs her centerpiece and reflection of a woman’s inner journey, Varda presentation of the material world, subtly shaping it into paints an enduring portrait of a woman’s evolution from a something more than real––a very modern style of shallow and superstitious child-woman to a person who can feel expressionism. And since L’opéra Mouffe is a mosaic of Parisian and express shock and anguish and finally empathy. In the impressions filtered through the perception of a pregnant woman, process, the director adroitly uses the camera’s addiction to Varda is declaring, early in her career, that gender matters in art beautiful women’s faces to subtly question the consequences of and cinema, that men and women are likely to see and feel the that fascination—on us, on them. same things very differently—a theme that follows through to her later films Vagabond (1985) and The Gleaners and I (2000), Adrian Martin, “Cléo from 5 to 7: Passionate time.” as well as to her installation Some Widows of Noirmoutier (Criterion Notes) (2006). There have been many films, from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) to Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2002), Varda—CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7—11

It is easy to hail Varda as a pioneer of feminist cinema– Varda’s career has often been yoked to the part of the –a label she resists––but Cléo from 5 to 7 was, way before its new wave centered on the directors associated with Cahiers du time, already a complex “postfeminist” por1trait of a woman. cinéma magazine. Her first feature, La Pointe Courte (1954), is Cléo is, after all, no idealized archetype. As a central movie widely regarded as the first film of that movement, predating by character, she is an unlikely, surprising choice. Cléo loves and five years the splash made by François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, suffers—and it is hard not to identify with her agonized wait for and others. It is clear what her films share with those Right Bank, the medical word that will decide her future—but she’s also more mainstream new wavers: a breathtaking ability to swing in petulant, frivolous, vain, scatty. Varda deliberately gave her a a moment from light to dark, comic to dramatic moods, and a “superficial” vocation as a pop singer, with a good deal of taste for the handheld camera, capturing on-the-run scenes shot privilege (her older, presumably well-off lover wafts in and out spontaneously in the streets of Paris. But Varda’s truer kinship without making any was with the loose Left Bank demands), and what, on any group comprising herself, normal day, would count as a husband Jacques Demy, Alain fairly whimsical set of errands Resnais, and Chris Marker, and tasks (shopping, among others. Signs of the more rehearsal, visits to friends). radical Left Bank sensibility are Here, as later in Le bonheur everywhere in Cléo from 5 to 7, (1964) and Vagabond, Varda as in the radio-fed references to avoids easy sentimentality and the conflict then raging in Algeria deliberately blocks the path to (which made Roger Tailleur, the immediately sympathizing film’s champion at Positif with her heroine. Corinne magazine, “fear in the darkness Marchand, superb in the role the probable presence of the of Cléo, at the time evoked censor”). More profoundly telling the gamine Jean Seberg of is the cubist-style, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless multiperspectival approach and anticipated the pop phenomenon of the yé-yé girl singers in characteristic of the Left Bank filmmakers—the sense that it is France. But she may seem even more peculiarly modern to a not one person’s tale but a story that belongs to everyone who twenty-first-century audience, a truly prophetic apparition: with passes in and out of its frame. While respecting the strict time- her celebrity narcissism, and her taste for tarot readings and space continuum of her premise, Varda in fact never ceases various other superstitions, Cléo could well be a Paris Hilton refracting her attention, racking focus on the lives, feelings, and type, plugged into new-age fads (at one point, logically enough, perspectives of all others who cross Cléo’s path; hence the torch Madonna was attached to a proposed remake). Like Federico passes, often without a cut, to “Angèle from 5:18 to 5:25” or Fellini at the time, Varda displayed a finely prescient sense for “Antoine from 6:12 to 6:15.” the rapid mutations in contemporary lifestyles; it is no surprise Time is as much a theme in Cléo from 5 to 7 as a that she would go on to be one of the best documenters of the narrative or formal structure. The entire drama (and comedy) of counterculture that kicked into gear by the late sixties—and that, the piece is based on the productive discrepancy between two thirty years later, would reassert itself in the social practices of very different sorts of time—the real clock time, passing second “scavenging” so lovingly recorded in The Gleaners and I. by second, with its end point of the news Cléo will receive from Because of its real-time structure, Cléo from 5 to 7 her doctor, and what Pascal Bonitzer once called the “passionate transforms what, in almost any other filmic context, would be time” known best from suspense thrillers but common to all mundane, or at least unspectacular, into drama. And, in doing so, fiction film, the experience of time that contracts or expands it transforms Cléo herself from a distracted, self-obsessed according to how we feel it. Apprehension, boredom, desire—the entertainer into someone whose fate we fix on and care about. film is a succession of these emotional states that, taken together, Her journey may be simple and straightforward on the pose a countertime, a time of the heart. And this heart time swells geographic level––into cabs, through parks, stopping off at cafés in the course of the film, ultimately transcending the and studios––but on the emotional level it gets deeper as it goes, mundaneness––and the menace––of everyday entropy. It is a accumulating reminders of mortality (such as the African masks dialectic––the finite limits of the natural and biological world she spies in a shopwindow) and stumbling upon unexpected versus the infinity of the emotions and the imagination––that epiphanies. In this way, the film traces an arc from the brittle, Varda would return to again and again, in such films as The worldly wisdom offered by Cléo’s assistant, Angèle (Dominique Creatures (1966) and Kung-Fu Master (1987) and in the Davray), to the soulful romanticism embodied by Antoine installation piece Zgougou’s Tomb (2006), which takes us from (Antoine Bourseiller), a soldier on leave. The quiet energy that the grave of the filmmaker’s beloved cat to a literally cosmic passes between Cléo and Antoine on a streetcar near the end of view of the wider world and stars. the story could well be Varda’s re-creation of the classic moment The most wonderful thing about Cléo from 5 to 7 is its of love reborn between a husband and wife, traveling on a air of freedom, evoked, paradoxically, within the very severe tramcar, in F. W. Murnau’s masterpiece Sunrise (1927)—a constraints of its real-time format, which must have posed a reminder of a film loved by the French critics of the fifties, those thousand challenges during shooting and postproduction. The same cinephiles who would become the new wave. film is superbly playful, poking occasional holes in its own carefully built illusion of cascading moments—such as when an Varda—CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7—12 early shot of Cléo descending stairs is repeated, in an editing by in a sustained intensity. Like Godard or Jerzy Skolimowski or loop, three times (an evident reference to Duchamp’s Nude Glauber Rocha in that heady period, Varda eschews flashbacks Descending a Staircase), or when she disappears behind a and plunges us into the breathless present-tense unfolding of paravent to reappear instantly in a new outfit. Rich color gives these precious ninety minutes in Cléo’s life. Yet, via the dialectic way to black and white after the credits, one of many reminders of real time and passionate time, the mundane and the hyperreal, of the artifice of cinema. The potentially least attractive aspect of Varda also creates a complex double focus, leaping (as Tailleur Cléo’s character, her propensity observed) from the here and to act out at the drop of a hat, now to eternity, to a cosmic provides the film with its unique, vision. In the final moments of modern register: this is, in a Cléo from 5 to 7, Cléo, even if humorous, almost camp way, a her fate is not entirely decided histrionic film, lightly or assured, is nonetheless exaggerating itself at every released: into serenity, into turn—as, for instance, in the love, and into a future that now impossible proliferation of seems possible beyond the mirrors and reflective surfaces second-to-second prison of wherever Cléo finds herself, clock-driven daily life. It is the indoors or outdoors, and in the kind of conceptual and delightful silent-film-within-the- emotional leap Varda would film pastiche featuring Godard, often make in her future work, Anna Karina, and Jean-Claude and is still making: from the Brialy (the trio had just worked inscrutable problems of a together on A Woman Is a marriage to the overarching, Woman). Cléo from 5 to 7 is also, in its sly way, a musical impossibly vibrant presence of the natural world of flowers and (shades, of course, of Demy’s work)—and no scene is more streams in Le bonheur; or in the very title of the autobiographical lyrical than the one in which Varda’s careful mise-en-scène 2006 exhibition about her regular trips to Noirmoutier, L’île et transforms Cléo’s clowning around and casual run-through of elle, “The Island and Her,” a pun also evoking “him and her.” “Sans toi” (Without You) with Bob (Michel Legrand, the film’s Gender roles may still be starkly dividing up the world that she composer) and Plumitif (Serge Korber) into a full-out musical shows us––a showbiz job for a woman and a military job for a number, only to snap instantly back, at the end of the song, into man in Cléo from 5 to 7, the domestic indoors for women and the the realism of the everyday. great outdoors for men in her multiscreen installation pieces— Coming in the midst of the new wave, Cléo from 5 to 7 but the power and energy of the imagination can surge forth to seemed to embody the prime obsession of all the young cinema abolish these divisions, and transcend the merely earthly in the movements of the sixties: to evoke the eternal present, flashing fusion offered by love.

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2014 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS Oct 14 Akira Kurosawa, REDBEARD, 1965 Oct 21 Nicolas Roeg, PERFORMANCE, 1970 Oct 28 Víctor Erice, THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, 1973 Nov 4 Roman Polanski, TESS, 1979 Nov 11 Sydney Pollack, TOOTSIE, 1982 Nov 18 Joel and Ethan Coen, FARGO, 1996 Nov 25 Erik Skjoldbjaerg, INSOMNIA, 1997 Dec 2 Mike Nichols, CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR, 2007

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