Agnes Varda

Agnes Varda

1)Also a Left Bank filmmaker
2)Married Jacque Demy (who didn't belong to the Left Bank nor Cahiers group)
3) Often explores themes of existentialism
4) The individual is responsible for meaning - not society or religion (It differs from nihilism).

Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962)
1) Stars Corinne Marchand as a singer
2) She confronts the possibility of having cancer.
3) Film told in virtually real time (The film is 90 min)
4)Follow Cleo as she waits for the medical results

Scene from Cleo..,
I found a similar scene to one showed in class Click Here
1)Initially begins to sing along with piano 
2)Suddenly other instruments not present in the room begin to play.
3)Cleo looks directly at us as she sings before the song ends
4)The narrative resumes.

                                       

Varda plays with diegetic and nondiegetic sound as the audience becomes disoriented to where the
sounds are originating. (from the world of the story or from a soundtrack the characters cannot hear?).

Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda, 1962):

Notes that I remember - She studied at the Louvre. Loved art and surrealists. Had some homages to Magritte in The Beaches of Agnes. She was also an installation artist and does that in Beaches. She was friends with Goddard, a great accomplishment was photographing him without his glasses as a friend request. Agnes said that 5 to 7 were the hours that men met with their mistresses. 

Here is a picture of Godard making a cameo in Cleo 5 to 7

Quote I found: 

"From recounting just the bare bones of what is seen on Cleo's journey around Paris on that sad day, Varda's endless and insatiable curiosity is perceivable and that is the real key. Such curiosity in the everyday—in things, thoughts and wanders—is really the mission statement of Varda's filmmaking as a whole and it was Cleo who first walked it into being."—Adam Scovell, Little White Lies

A Ted Talk with Agnes VardaClick Here