AGNES VARDA, mother of the nouvelle vague

The California Films now out on CC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VLArLHK4yc

https://www.criterion.com/boxsets/1124-eclipse-series-43-agnes-varda-in-california

Ooh, good news! I've always wanted to see Lions.

mur murs is great, & uncle yanco's one of the most perfectly formed things she did, i think - it's so vibrant & formally inventive & beautiful.

i watched le bonheur last night, i'm kinda patchy with the earlier films, they're nice but i come to them expecting the wrong things on account of the richness of her later/essayistic work

i saw her discuss La Pointe Courte after this screening a few months ago. She is in fact tiny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfC0UBiTG4g

At least you didn't call her the 'grandmother' of the nouvelle vague

Le Bonheur's ending is like the beginning of Haneke. Cleo is as good as any French film classic from the time.

The docs and in-between experiments are def overlooked. Lions is proto-reality tv.

Came across this today: http://cleojournal.com/category/vol-3-issue-2-camp/

i watched le bonheur recently also & dug it v much

also watched the jane birkin one kung fu master/le petit amour - considering the premise its surprisingly watchable but id not really recommend it, best part is prob charlotte gainsbourg who you can already tell is a natural actress

Embarrassed to say that I've never seen anything by her. Where should I start?

Cléo

Cleo, La Bonheur, Le Pointe Courte.

Docs are as important. Mur Murs is great, she is probably the only French filmmaker who did anything of note with her time in America (not that others from that generation made any serious attempts)

gorin! on a not dissimilar wavelength.

good shout actually.

interesting (to me at least) abt le Bonheur -- its wiki entry had previously described the guy as proposing a threesome to his wife after she confronts him abt his affair. I thought this was bizarre but maybe like lost in translation or something. That ref has since been removed & the wiki cleaned up & edited w/ some historical perspective also in connection w/ some class project, v cool

Docs are as important.

The Gleaners and I

Jacquot de Nantes (after you've seen a few Demy films)

the scene where he's explaining his affair in beautiful bucolic return-to-nature fantasy apple orchard terms is so unbearable, seinfeldian menage hints would've been preferable

The Gleaners and I

One day I'll see it..

so good. need to watch more.

prob too obv to mention, but vagabond <3

She's awesome yeah

Her films show up from time to time on mubi, though not as often as marker. Also docalliance put a load if her films up for free a while ago.

Surprised nobody has mentioned the beaches of Agnes yet, so good

yep

Sandrine Bonnaire is amazing in Vagabond

I'm not big on Cleo but Le Bonheur, Vagabond, The Gleaners and I are impressive.

Would love to have heard the breakfast chatter between her and Jacques Demy.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/watch-agnes-vardas-new-short-film-les-3-boutons-20150903

chats with Miranda July about generational shifts, Jane Birkin, work and family—and the time capsule that is KUNG-FU MASTER.

When a woman works, you say, ‘who’s caring for the kids,’ when a man works, nobody asks. I remember people, they would ask me and I would say, ‘Do you ask Truffaut?’

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/the-lens-miranda-july-and-agnes-varda

she's so great.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/dec/10/agnes-varda-photographs-cuba-salut-les-cubains

so much varda on mubi a few months ago, i got overwhelmed and watched none of it

She met Castro, after several attempts – it was a last-minute affair at his favourite seaside restaurant. “He was good-looking, nice, calm,” Varda remembers. She made him stand before two huge boulders, so he appeared to have wings of stone. In her film, she noted: “He incarnates Cuba the way Gary Cooper incarnates the wild west.”

gag

The Moré photo is beautiful. Would watch a Varda doc on post-coup Cuba.

Really hope they restore Marker's Cuba Si someday (if someone hasn't done that already?) The Varda doc is so good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb6EFdB1x1E

Lions Love is fantastic.

an Oscar

http://www.oscars.org/news/academy-honor-charles-burnett-owen-roizman-donald-sutherland-and-agnes-varda-oscars-2017

A.V. was on hand to introduce One Sings, the Other Doesn’t at NYFF yesterday. I liked the first hour fine, but the next 45 mins were a little heavy on mid-'70s feminist acoustic-guitar ballads extolling Engels and pregnancy.

It was a new DCP, apparently forthcoming on Criterion?

he next 45 mins were a little heavy on mid-'70s feminist acoustic-guitar ballads extolling Engels and pregnancy.

I initially read this as "mid-'70s feminist acoustic-guitar ballads extolling EAGLES and pregnancy.

only if she had stayed in L.A.

Don & Glenn From 5-7

What did they think of her work?

Loved One Sings, the Other Doesn't when i saw it last year - really liked the journey from of the two friends (in the context of so much talk of female friendship in fiction this slots right in), the Iranian journey (although Varda's Iranian work in the context of the Shah could be a troublesome aspect), as all r/ships, was v well done - one of her best films. The songs and their filming on unsuspecting punters was kinda funny and not cruel. Playful.

Yeah, I liked the punter reactions. The Iranian trip didn't make me think of Varda re the Shah but about Teheran on the eve of revolution.

I haven't watched this, is it just excerpts from OStOD?

http://bbook.com/film/watch-agnes-vardas-1976-short-film-plaisir-damour-en-iran/

I have seen that short a few years before OStOD and can't remember. In fact its what I was thinking of - lots of ppl got money off the Shah during that period, so...troublesome.

As a piece of cinema - divorcing the politics for now - it works.

well, when Orson Welles and tons of Hollywood productions shot in Spain in the '50s and '60s, they said you could get all the resources you wanted as long as Franco's minions got their money.

into the CC closet

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5000-agnes-varda-s-closet-picks

I still haven't seen An Angel at My Table but I'm inclined to wag my finger at her for championing Sweetie.

Criterion needs to do a sweepstakes surrounding this closet.

They'd have to cap the number of movies you could take. I'd have far less shame than the people they typically feature.

You'd have a tough time outdoing these clowns:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSdxbBsShak

ugh i was just thinking about that, it looked like they took like 50 movies

I mean, I'd grab exactly 53 myself ... and then a few more DVD-to-BR upgrades to boot.)

Amoeba has a similar video series and I feel conflicted about watching them since I know that they're just trying to ease me into an acquisitive mindset.

Certainly putting the word "collection" in their brand didn't already serve the same purpose.

was afraid she'd died (sorry Agnes, you're probably immortal, I know)

anyway <3 that closet picks! :)

well holy shit I had no idea ELECTION was being added to the Collection! sweet list, Eric! gonna preorder that one ASAP, one of my favorite movies

A.V. was on hand to introduce One Sings, the Other Doesn’t at NYFF yesterday. I liked the first hour fine, but the next 45 mins were a little heavy on mid-'70s feminist acoustic-guitar ballads extolling Engels and pregnancy.

It was a new DCP, apparently forthcoming on Criterion?

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius)

Saw this screening also and had a similar reaction. Too many songs! And acting was inconsistent. Didn't realize the mother of "Pomme" was played by the mother of the actress.

Faces Places had its poignant moments but she's shot and made to act like an old little dear.

multi-critic debate I witnessed had one fiercely insisting this film is not "twee"

It's too brief and amiable to give offense, but the reviews I've read that praise her attention to the working class don't mention how touristic the approach

Twee's a moving target. A fresh from film school trust fund floppy haired boy? Twee. A French octogenarian who has frequently shared air with Chris Marker? She gets a pass.

how about a classic director having her Godard-aping co-star take photos of he bare feet while she gigges?

Split decision. I know nothing about this JR character, so he may torpedo the whole thing.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f8/ed/08/f8ed08666b34fd4c999c78c47afd1486--iced-tea-nuest-jr.jpg

well, she is an old little dear.

A fair amount of this was staged/written, no? like the Godard 'villainy' climax.

I was tired and almost nodded off a few times, but Agnes OTM in the cemetery.

I liked the tough union wives

hahaha

Varda on her honourary Oscar https://t.co/4fScxq2BdE: pic.twitter.com/zdJowFkyTc

— Women Film Directors (@women_direct) October 9, 2017

Agnès Varda! https://t.co/QUCMeXBVTL pic.twitter.com/2BF4JagBiw

— Jackson McHenry (@McHenryJD) January 23, 2018

Faces Places worked better on me the second time; it's about AV's mortality to a large degree, the Cartier-Bresson graveside scene being crucial

gotta be honest, this bump scared me

I haven't watched this yet because I get annoying Mr. Brainwash vibes from the co-director.

gotta be honest, this bump scared me

― flappy bird, 15. maj 2018 18:59 (forty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Otm :(

You don't have to love JR to like the film. I'd probably sleep with him, tho.

Jesus, I thought you dummies had killed her by bumping this, don't do that!

she's still working! what are we supposed to do?

turns 90 in a week or two

assorted retros going on, esp at MOMI in NY

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5707-agn-s-varda-on-the-cusp-of-ninety

This (Faces Places) was terrific, very moving.

I saw Kung-Fu Master! yesterday, where Jane Birkin falls for a 14-year-old boy (played by Mathieu Demy). Good, strange little film, oddly not protested by any snowflakes I could see.

Filmstruck had a large program of Varda films for six months and that was one of the few I missed. :(

First of all, VARDA STILL ALIVE.

Just got out of a DCP screening of One Sings... Really beautiful and still timely, albeit perhaps a tad too long?

Reviewing the thread, I see my issues have been brought up already. One funny thing is how that wordless song at the end is more or less "Dust In The Wind".

missed the DCP when it was here in July, out on home video yet?

Vagabond is still the only Varda I've seen

Janus Films is touring it, so I imagine Criterion will have it out sooner or later.

And I assume that edition will have The Pleasure of Love In Iran (a companion short featuring three of the lead characters) as a bonus.

There's already a perfectly fine Region B Varda Blu Ray set that includes One Sings...

https://curzonartificialeye.com/the-agn%C3%A8s-varda-collection/

Saw the trailer for her latest film and I despise JR. What possessed her to collaborate with this creature?

he made a quick impression, eh

well she usta like Fidel Castro too

She might still like Castro for all we know!

Seriously, I think Varda could've just hung around Hoxton/Shoreditch for a few weeks and got it out of her system instead?

@ ward i don't have a region free player :(

announced as her swan song

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6198-varda-by-agn-shttps://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6198-varda-by-agn-s

Don't scare me, thread.

we're not gonna lock it just cuz she's 90

Like Aaliyah (and Ryan Adams?) said: "Age ain't nuthin' but a number, Morbs."

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6198-varda-by-agn-s

the link

The new one is a delight. A bit slight, mostly just Varda talking about herself for two hours, but who doesn't want that? Made me want to rewatch all her films and make my own.

RIP

☹️☹️☹️

should have lived forever. Glad she managed to make a film THIS YEAR.

Cleo de 5 a 7 probably the greatest nouvelle vague movie ever.

RIP

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-47745841

Infinite respect for working until the very end

at least she lived to become a meme on instagram?

v sad news

i saw vagabond for the first time last year and it is pretty incredible

i saw her talk at screenings at least twice, and she seemed both warm and thoroughly unsentimental. (See the cemetery scene with JR.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps2KO3pmgb0

My little obit.

nice.

Faces Places was pretty corny, but the bizarre Godard scene (including and especially Varda's reaction) kinda saved it for me.

JR is a no no as a collaborator although now she has gone maybe I think maybe the fault is with me - she was so good at seeing something in everyone and all the places she visited.

Carolee, Barbara and now Agnès. Three women who only got the recognition they deserved in the last few years of their life and who were making work til the end. Programmers and funding bodies must take note and give women retrospectives (and money!) before the end of their lives.

— Another Gaze: A Feminist Film Journal (@anothergaze) March 29, 2019

^ this tweet is all the usual rhetoric (the larger point is true enough) but it doesn't make sense in regards to Varda. She realised her vision early on (no 'lost' years) just kept making film after film and doc after doc, working till the end. There have been solid retros of her work in London for as long as I've known French film and she has never been upstaged by her husband at all or had her work brushed aside. The 'Grandmother' thing rankles tho'.

Only Godard left now isn't it? Its all so sad to see this amazing generation of filmmakers go.

Happiness which is top 3 Varda - is playing on MUBI

Not in the US, but they are showing three others.

it doesn't make sense in regards to Varda

agreed, she was everywhere the past few years -- they even had a life-size standee of her greeting folks at the MOMI in Queens.

a few of her films are still pretty obscure, some very deservedly so (like the one she made on the 100th anniversary of cinema). but the great ones are pretty well recognized as such and widely seen.

it's easy to be cynical about varda's meme-ification of late, what with her becoming a sort of virtual den mother to lots of female artist intragammers and so on, or at least they treated her as such. but i try not to be, because every bit of attention she got was well-deserved, her work deserves wide exposure, and it's important for young people to have someone like her to look up to and by which to claim a heritage.

also she was, like, literally everywhere -- travelling constantly, making appearances in paris (of course), london, new york, los angeles.... AFAICT she seldom ended up cancelling visits, even in her late 80s. not so shabby.

speaking of female french filmmakers, clare denis is making a ton of appearances in NY next week/end, and then is showing up in chicago as well.

life-size standee

she was like 5'1" or something--maybe even shorter in her old age. so my friends and i towered over said standee. i think her size had something to do w/ the way she was often treated, somewhat condescendingly that is, although she sometimes leaned into that "eccentric little granny" thing in recent years.

vagabond is all-time btw.

late to the party and stating the obvious but on friday I watched Cleo & La Pointe Courte - I was struck by how Varda beat Bergman to the Persona punch by 11 years with that one profile shot. the Resnais connection is less striking I guess since he edited it, and I'm assuming nicked quite a bit from the experience for Hiroshima and Marienbad.

I watched Beaches of Agnes and it has got to be one of the most exciting and successful memoir films I can recall. Some of her work doesn't click w/ me but this did. I feel like a schmuck for waiting over a decade to watch it.

NYT:

It was also during (the California) period that she befriended Jim Morrison, the frontman of the Doors, who visited her and Mr. Demy in France; according to Stephen Davis’s “Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend” (2004), she was one of only five mourners at Mr. Morrison’s funeral in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris in 1971. That same year she became one of the 343 women to sign the “Manifesto of the 343,” a French petition acknowledging that they had had abortions and thus making themselves vulnerable to prosecution.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/obituaries/agnes-varda-dead.html

AO Scott counters, a little, Alfred's evaluation of "late Varda as brand":

By putting herself — body, voice and mind — in the frame as she made her way across beaches and marketplaces, Varda insisted that filmmaking could be a kind of companionship, a communal act of looking, wondering and feeling. What makes “The Gleaners and I” and her last feature, “Faces Places” (co-directed with the artist J.R.) so moving is that they create a bond between director and viewer that feels very much like friendship.

I don’t mean this to sound soft or sentimental, or to create a misleading impression of niceness. Friends can be difficult. Friendship is demanding. It is also transformative, and if Varda was among the most welcoming of directors, she was also among the most rigorous and radical. Her movies are intensely personal, which is another way of saying that they are profoundly democratic. That’s the history that needs to be written.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/movies/agns-varda-appreciation.html

I rewatched Le Bonheur last night, and, boy, I undersold its radicalness. I forgot how ambiguously she treats what happens to the spurned wife.

I'd count 'Varda by Agnes' as a feature too, though, and it's a very nice final look back.

For the French speakers ARTE recently broadcast two hours of her "film class" at the Cinématheque. Along with the full 8- episode series of Bertrand Tavernier's "Voyage à travers le cinéma français" ( also 2019 ) it's essential viewing.

I think that film class is 'Varda by Agnes'?

Yes, you're right!

wow

Madonna was touched by the story of Cléo [a story of a women waiting for a cancer diagnosis], and she asked a woman to adapt the screenplay for her. It was OK with me. But her mother had cancer and died, and she quit the project. If I had remade it in the US at the time, I thought it should be a black woman being afraid of Aids – in those years, Aids was such a terrible threat. I would have loved to make it with Whitney Houston.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/mar/29/agnes-varda-last-interview-i-fought-for-radical-cinema-all-my-life

There's a clip of Varda and Madge appearing together on a French talk show and discussing the by then abandoned remake on the Criterion box set edition of Cleo, but that Whitney thing is new-ish and amazing.

I had forgotten about Bonnaire getting old Aunt Lydie drunk in the last half hour, a delight.

*the last half hour of Vagabond, that is.

La Pointe Course was a good first film, although ultimately a little schematic. Le Bonheur and One Sings, the Other Doesn’t were both fantastic I thought

Le Bonheur was an interesting critique of male psychology. Its use of color was striking and had the effect of making the evanescence of happiness in the story more poignant

apparently on its release in 1977, Amy Taubin found One Sings, the Other Doesn’t insufficiently radical, but she completely revised her opinion in an essay for Criterion this year

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6399-one-sings-the-other-doesn-t-bodies-and-selves

*La Pointe Courte*

One Sings is didactic but endearing enough to more than make up for its message movie tendencies

the songs, oy

lol

Calling this film didactic is just lazy. I mean how many people knew or cared to know what this film talks about at the time it was made.

watching it again Vagabond still seems really moving

Need to watch that again. Saw it when it first came up and was worried about how it was going to work but seems like many obvious pitfalls were avoided.

Calling this film didactic is just lazy. I mean how many people knew or cared to know what this film talks about at the time it was made.

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, September 14, 2019 2:52 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

I like it a lot, but it's exactly what you said, a movie of its time

don't think xyzzzz___ was saying it was a movie of its time though

what was revelatory in 1977 comes off as stiff, but OSATOD more than makes up for it

The issues in that film are all around us so no it's not a film of its time.

I appreciate “The Gleaners and I” more seeing it again. I don’t find interviews and voice-over exposition in general all that interesting, but in this film they seem perfect

a natural subject matter for her, as a 'gleaner of gleaners'

“…and then there is my hand up close. I mean, this is my project: to film with one hand my other hand. To enter into the horror of it. I find it extraordinary. I feel as if I am an animal, worse, I am an animal I don’t know.

And here’s Rembrandt’s self-portrait, but it’s just the same in fact. Always a self-portrait.”

Cinévardaphoto is a nice trio of short films

Beaches of Agnes is really great, it is both nostalgic and forward thinking and is so beautiful, it's one of my favorite films of hers

I remembered a moment from beaches of agnes the other day, when she's on the boardwalk at the card sale, she finds a flyer for Documenteur and says "Oh! my favorite"

she had such a generosity of spirit

the reminiscences of her many lives in Beaches of Agnes reminds me of all of the Varda films I still haven't seen

saw JR’s The Chronicles of San Francisco and revisited some of Agnes Varda’s documentaries recently, then this week rewatched Faces Places and was even more taken with it than I was the first time. I like the quote above about her films forming a bond with the viewer that feels like friendship

Varda tries to unmask JR’s identity, or at least get him to take off his sunglasses, even pressing his grandmother

“prepared to sit right inside their own hearts”. I liked the whole exploration about how much of ourselves we are willing to give to another

Did she do any lesser feature than Lions Love? Ragni, Rado and Viva seem like the 3 most annoying bohos in '68 LA.

Lions Love is fantastic.

― aaaaaaaauuuuuuuuu (melting robot) (WilliamC), Monday, January 23, 2017

'splain!

lol, I have no memory of the film now. Obviously it make a strong impression at the time though!

Don’t think I made it to the end of that one

Did she do any lesser feature than /Lions Love/? Ragni, Rado and Viva seem like the 3 most annoying bohos in '68 LA.

It's SET then, over a mere week, but I'm sure they cheated some. There was a billboard for The Odd Couple visible in one car scene that read "2 Academy Award Nominations," which had to be shot in early '69.

Ohhh gotcha

Shirley Clarke otoh is magnetic, but she doesn't have enough scenes.

yeah iirc we're stuck with those fucking hippies for most of it

Uniquely irritating in a way that ruins the movie for me, just like Stranger Than Paradise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dySwfrzAEeI&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dySwfrzAEeI

This August, we're celebrating the boundless creative vision of Agnès Varda with a comprehensive collection of her genre-blurring, culture-shaping films, bringing together all thirty-nine of her features, shorts, and documentaries for the first time! 🧡💜💗https://t.co/qYMbWfwmus pic.twitter.com/7nMiXmPdqs

— Criterion Collection (@Criterion) May 11, 2020

omg

And indeed, I now have that set, just arrived today. I look forward to exploring it in full steadily over time.

I'm seeing some reviews that some (but not all?) of the older color films have been piss filtered.

did she ever do another movie as dark and angry and formally cutting as Le Bonheur? not Vagabond, that's presented in a much less oblique way.

No, I don't think so.

So, "Les Creatures". Michel Piccoli goes berserk and attacks some children and an old man with a dead cat; has a conversation with a rabbit about his wife's pregnancy (the rabbit answers him btw); plays a weird chess game, using holograms of the other characters in the film, with an evil scientist. Catherine Deneuve is in it but is mute for almost the entire film. Varda considered it a failure and I'm inclined to agree with her. Definitely worth watching though!

Agreed. Nice showcase for FrancoScope, like watching a movie through a goddamn fishbowl.

Piccoli later compared the character he played in Les Creatures to the character he played in Dillinger is Dead, only one of Marco Ferreri's multiple masterpieces.

Did she do any lesser feature than Lions Love? Ragni, Rado and Viva seem like the 3 most annoying bohos in '68 LA.

The two guys are terrible but Viva is great, though I wish there'd been less of her doing her patented Warhol wack job routine and more bits like the straight-to-camera monologue she does at the end.

Never made it through that one

I barely made it through the first 10 minutes tbh.

Viva is good, I like her more in Cisco Pike though (where she has some direct addresses as well, iirc)

And they're all so old! Viva was 30 and the two Hair guys were even older, Jim Rado was born in 1932! I couldn't see past the wig he had on too.

I must have said this elsewhere but I'm slowly filling (the vast) holes in my film knowledge and am largely being led by what I read on here. I've watched a couple of Vardas in the last week (Gleaners and Cléo From 5 To 7) and it has been like discovering a new author in some ways. This may just be coming to understand film grammar, but there's something very literary about her use of symbolism and the authorial frame.

Varda makes things seem so simple, almost as if there were barely an editing process at all; both films in their way, particularly Gleaners, feel like dérives. I know the answer is 'wherever the rapid passage through varied ambiences takes you,' but where does one go next?

I searched for this image because *eyes on stalks*. Didn't even notice the angel wings at the time.

https://www.classicartfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Cleo-2.bmp

This image:

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/578e9611b3db2b81e152317e/1524608062137-B68ZLJLHM3V9791TGAH8/Film+-+Varda++cleo-de-5-a-7+D*.jpg?content-type=image%2Fjpeg

I watched Le Bonheur last year, and I thought it was devastating... so pretty to look at, but such a dark outcome

Also: Vagabond holds up really well, such a good film

https://www.filmlinc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Le-bonheur-1600x900-c-default.jpeg

New bio coming out by Carrie Rickey looks promising!