4 Days With Agnes Varda: An Introduction

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By Lindsay Zoladz

I was at home for Christmas break when I read that Criterion was going to release an Agnes Varda box set. Elated, I ran down the stairs and sputtered to my mom, appropriately enough, “Criterion is going to release an Agnes Varda box set!” She stared blankly at me, blinked a few times and said, “Neat.”

I continued in a frantic pace, “This is so great! La Pointe Courte and Le Bonheur haven’t been available in the US in, like, fifty years!” (Sadly, this is all true; I really do act like this when I get excited about something movie-related.)

“Mm-hmm.”

I was met with a similar reaction a month or two later, when, in a film class, we were each choosing a director to be the subject of a semester-long project.

“Varda?” my professor asked, as if I had just spoken a curse word in a made-up language.

“Yes.”

He took up his pen. “V-a-r-d-a?”

I nodded.

“So, what is she known for?” he asked.

Not knowing how to even begin answering his question in that sort of context, I decided to say (for reasons inexplicable to me even now), “She’s French,” and leave it at that.

The legacy that Agnes Varda (though she is still very much alive at the ripe old age of 79, and still very much making movies) has left in her wake is frustrating to me for two reasons. The first is one you can gather from the stories above: her name is not very well known, and it seldom appears on the often abridged marquee of the French New Wave, along with the (entirely deserving) headliners Godard, Chabrol and Truffaut. Varda was the only female director associated with the movement, and this fact brings me to my second reason for frustration. It has been 54 years since Varda made her first film, La Pointe Courte, and in that long stretch of time, the history of female film directors has not made very impressive strides in France or in America or really anywhere else, at least in the eyes of the mainstream public. (Of the 400 films on the ballot for the “AFI Top 100 Films” list, only four were directed by women. No women has ever won the Best Director Oscar; Sofia Coppola was the first American woman to even be nominated, and that was only five years ago. I could go on and bore you with statistics, but I won’t.) This frustrates me now as it frustrated me a few weeks ago, as I confirmed my professor’s spelling of V-a-r-d-a and looked around to realize, for the first time, that I was the only girl in the class.

Still, Criterion’s celebrated release of 4 By Agnes Varda certainly says something, and it allows the unsettling beauty and striking imagery of her films to say even more. Also notable: I find something reassuring about the fact that, as seen in a picture in the box set on the set of La Pointe Courte in 1954, Agnes Varda (who, if you care to know, married filmmaker Jacques Demy in the early 60s) has always looked exactly the same: that eternal pageboy haircut and witchy little face are exactly the same as those seen in the memorable self-portrait shots of 2000’s The Gleaners and I.

This is just the introduction to a 4-part entry in which I will watch all four of the films in the box set and write on each one. I have only seen two of the films, so this will be an exciting task for me as well. Expect all the entries in the next week or so, maybe leaning towards the “or so” end of the spectrum, seeing how unfortunately little free time I have to post here right now.

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Tags: 4 Days With Agnes Varda, AFI top 100 films, Agnes Varda, Best Director Oscar, Chabrol, Criterion, Film, French New Wave, Godard, Jacques Demy, La Pointe Courte, Le Bonheur, Movies, Sofia Coppola, The Gleaners and I, Truffaut