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.

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