Cinema Scope: Bridging Genres, Subgenres, & Movements

In this captivating bonus episode of Cinema Scope, host Andy Nelson dives deeper into the fascinating world of the French New Wave. Following up on the previous conversation about this groundbreaking film movement, Andy is joined by special guest Carrie Rickey, author of the new book A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda.
Throughout the episode, Carrie shares her insights into the life and career of Agnès Varda, a pivotal figure in the French New Wave. She discusses how Varda's unique approach to filmmaking, blending narrative and documentary elements, contributed to the movement's innovative spirit. Carrie also explores the challenges Varda faced as a woman filmmaker in an industry dominated by men.
Varda's Journey from Photography to Film
Carrie delves into Varda's transition from still photography to filmmaking, explaining how her desire to help a friend dealing with cancer led to the creation of her first feature film, La Pointe Courte. This movie, shot on location with a mix of scripted and improvised scenes, exemplified the fresh and unconventional approach that would come to define the French New Wave.
Varda's Distinctive Style and Themes
As the conversation progresses, Carrie highlights the distinctive qualities of Varda's films, such as her use of real locations, her exploration of universal themes, and her ability to blend fiction and documentary elements seamlessly. She also discusses how Varda's work often addressed the differences between men and women within marriage and society, as seen in films like Le Bonheur and Le Creature.
The Legacy of the French New Wave
While the French New Wave was a relatively short-lived movement, its impact on cinema was profound and long-lasting. Carrie emphasizes how filmmakers like Varda, Truffaut, and Godard each brought their unique visions to the movement, challenging traditional filmmaking conventions and paving the way for a new era of cinema.
This bonus episode of Cinema Scope offers a brief but captivating glimpse into the life and work of Agnès Varda, and her significant contributions to the French New Wave. Through Carrie Rickey's insightful commentary, listeners gain a deeper understanding of this revolutionary film movement and the enduring legacy of one of its most important figures. Don't miss this engaging conversation that will leave you eager to explore the groundbreaking films of the French New Wave and the remarkable career of Agnès Varda.
Film Sundries
  • (00:00) - Welcome to Cinema Scope • French New Wave Bonus Episode • Agnès Varda
  • (03:05) - The Draw to Varda
  • (07:23) - Varda and the French New Wave
  • (21:14) - The Book

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What is Cinema Scope: Bridging Genres, Subgenres, & Movements?

Cinema Scope with Andy Nelson takes you on a captivating journey through the ever-evolving landscape of film. Moreover, it offers a unique and engaging perspective on the art of cinema.

Andy:

Welcome to CinemaScope. We're doing a special bonus episode that ties into our French New Wave conversation that we just had. I'm your host, Andy Nelson, your guide on this journey to bridge film genres, subgenres, and movements, ultimately deepening our understanding of them all. I have Carrie Rickey with me today. Carrie is joining me because, she has written a new book about Agnes Varda called A Complicated Passion.

Andy:

This book is really kind of a a an exploration of Varda and her career and her life, and it just is a perfect timing to have this conversation with the release of our French New Wave episode. Carrie, welcome to the show.

Carrie:

Thank you for welcoming me.

Andy:

I'm thrilled to have you, and I'm excited that you've written this book. It's a fascinating glimpse into Varda's life and her films and all of the different directions that her life took. Kicking off this conversation, tell us what drew you to her and made you want to write this book about her.

Carrie:

When I grew up in the 19 fifties sixties, there weren't a lot of movies with women in them who weren't, you know, decorative, shall we say? Is that the word? And and a film professor named Manny Farber showed Cleo from 5 to 7. And I had just never seen, at that point in my life, a woman story carry a movie. It was, a revelation, and I didn't know there was such a thing as a woman filmmaker.

Carrie:

And then later, I would find out that there were many and that there, some of the earliest filmmakers in the 18 nineties were indeed women.

Andy:

Yeah. Right.

Carrie:

And I and I and I wanted to write about women filmmakers and why so many of them had been written out of history, and I could write that story through Agnes Varda's life.

Andy:

Sure. Which makes sense because it's quite a, quite a journey in a variety of different directions for the course of her life. But, specifically, we're here, you know, this this month, we're looking at, the French new wave, and VARTA played a pivotal role in that. The conversation about French New Wave, we hear all of these male filmmakers, and then Agnes Varda is is also in the mix. 1 of the, one of the group from the left bank.

Carrie:

I really don't think that the left bank filmmakers are are really a real distinction be although they did live on left left bank, but Renee is there, and he's really not credited as left bank. But they were more political than the so called right bank guys. But I I think it's a a distinction without a difference.

Andy:

Gotcha. Interesting. Well, the the distinction that was a difference though is in all of these different people who were key to the kind of creation of the French new wave is they're all men except for her. And that's, an interesting element here. Can, what is it about Varda that tapped into what this group was wanting to do to kind of change the way that film was shaped.

Carrie:

1st of all, the film industry in France was broken after the end of World War 2. You're broken by the Nazi occupation, broken by a lot of the filmmakers and writers. We're not supporters we're not collaborators. It was a period of rebuilding an industry and a lot of people like Francois Truffaut, who wrote a very famous article about, basically, the old guard. There are certain tendencies in in French cinema, which was a a assault on traditional French cinema, which was about the adaptation of novels, you know, made on studio sets and not in real life.

Carrie:

And, individually, Varda, who had just been who'd been a still photographer for, you know, 5 5 years, 6 years, decided to make a movie, and it was not on stage sets, not on not on sound stages. It wasn't an adaptation of a novel. It was an original script. It was shot mostly outdoors with the exception of 1 or 2 interiors. And it kind of brought fresh air into this stagnant, stale, studio type film.

Carrie:

It wasn't an adapt adaptation of a of a novel that didn't have the spirit of that novel. It was was very much like a 100 or so years or 80 years before when the impressionist decided to stop painting in studios and go out and embrace life in the real world and, you know, let let oxygen in. And it was I I don't know how conscious that was. Varder knew a lot about art history as did Alain Laurier. But given what American movies were like at that moment, it seemed new, young, energetic, and it wasn't carried by movie stars.

Carrie:

And it was, it marked the the rise of a new generation.

Andy:

Do you know, like, what is it that, that pushed her to shift from still photography into film?

Carrie:

Originally, she was just going to continue to be a still photographer because she was making a good good living

Andy:

Sure.

Carrie:

Of photographing, great actors for the French National Theatre. A friend of hers or, the husband of a friend or a very good friend of hers when she was growing up had, brain cancer. She wanted to organize fun excursions to get his mind off of that and to have him and his wife enjoy their their remaining time together.

Andy:

Yeah.

Carrie:

And she rich initially, she wrote this script about this town that she that her family fled to, during World War 2. She was born in Belgium. They landed in, the south of France in a in a town called Sette that was, near the coast, and there's a big fishing community. And she she knew that area, and she brought her friends from France down there. And, at the time, there was a very dramatic thing happening with the fishing community where the, the water was had a lot of bacteria in it, and the fishermen might lose their occupations.

Carrie:

And she had real fishermen as the background of this movie. And in the foreground was a couple who were having communications problems and trying to get back together. So it was like a a 2 tier study. A lot of her movies have these 2 tiers. You see Cleo from 5 to 7 is about real time or is is set in real time, but that real time we're looking at time in that movie as when the heroine is having fun or connecting with the outside world, time passes really fast.

Carrie:

But when she's worried about her biopsy, because also a movie about cancer, she is, the movie goes very slowly and and trudges. And so in in Cleo, Varda is trying to show the difference between when you're enjoying yourself or connecting with other people, time goes by fast. But when you're suffering in yourself and anxious in yourself, time just goes very slowly, like the proverbial molasses in winter.

Andy:

Yeah.

Carrie:

In Love Point Court, she's going between these families that are very warm and trying to solve a problem collectively with this couple who is trying to solve the problem of their marriage alone. And it also has that rhythm of going very quickly in some scenes and being very stiff and almost monotonous in the other scenes as this couple tries to work their way back into love. Varda thought it was gonna be a one off. She never thought she'd make another movie.

Andy:

Wow.

Carrie:

But the process of making it really excited her. Since she'd been a photographer for so long, she really knew she had a script, but she knew from photography, when you when something looks good and exciting, shoot it. You know, ditch the plan. Those kind of very funny scenes with cats walking, cats materializing, but whenever Varda Varda, who is a cat lover, whenever in her movies, cats always seem to manifest because they were her spirit animals. And there's a lot of, fun in the movie, and then there's a lot of stiffness.

Carrie:

But her producers introduced her to Alain Roenne, who is a maker of documentary film shorts, and he edited, the movie for her. Through him, she learned what editing was or how to do it and how to how to put together this this largely part scripted, part improvised film. And I think a lot of her best movies are she'll do a lot of research, and they're kind of put together in the edit. And I'm talking about, a lot of, movies she made in the fifties, like, for the, Ministry of Tourism. One called Along the Coast, another one called, Oh Seasons, Oh Chateaus.

Carrie:

She would put together she would film all this information, and then with music, with a voice over narration, she it would become animated. It would become an exploration.

Andy:

Yeah. Right. Right. Right.

Carrie:

She used she used all the means that that cinema had. One of her great movies, the gleaners and I also uses it. She kind of sees someone at the at her local market, you know, bending down and grabbing, you know, dead lettuces from a market stall, and she thinks of the old gleaners in France who were allowed to do a harvest after the harvest and take food for themselves. And, something that's spoken about in the bible, something that's spoken about in, you know, 16th century French law that it was it was stipulated that the gleaners get people who didn't have wealth or entitled to the harvest after the harvest. Those movies are unlike anyone else's, and and that's not where the I don't think that's where the, the new wave began, but that's where one of the ways it it lived on.

Carrie:

Because the new wave was actually quite short between 19, 59 when Truffaut makes his first feature, And 1964 when, Godard makes contempt, it was like you couldn't get money. That was a very exciting period when producers were actually putting money into these movies, And, it was very exciting. But after 64, it was very hard to get money for these movies. But Truffaut had his own producer. Chabrol had his own producer.

Carrie:

Jacques Demi, who was married to Varda, had a very interesting producer, who helped him make the umbrellas of Cherbourg and, the young girls at Rochefort. But Varda didn't have the same producer. She always had to look for money. And I was it it was much harder for her.

Andy:

But she still kept pretty busy in that period.

Carrie:

She kept enormously busy, but she she got pressed because she was a woman, and that was kind of like a freak show. You know? Oh my god. We can do this. And she didn't have the same aims as as the men.

Carrie:

Her husband, Jacques Demy, was really largely replicating or doing his version of Hollywood musicals. Chabrol was very, very interested in crime films, and he he was adapting detective stories and crime stories. Truffaut and Godard, like Varda, were in their own worlds, made made really interesting movies. Sometimes sometimes for both of them adapted from novels, sometimes, invented. To me, those are the 3 very interesting filmmakers.

Carrie:

But Varda and Renee were both very influenced by the nouveau romaine, the the French new novel

Andy:

Oh, okay.

Carrie:

Which was more experimental than most movies. Varda, who did who always claimed that she'd never seen more than 10 movies before making 1, and I don't know I'm not sure that's exactly true because that number changes from 10 to 25 to a dozen. I think she wanted to make movies that were like the new novel, more oblique, making the audience do more work. And, Renee did that too when with his first with his first features. Yeah.

Carrie:

Here's Jim Aman more and etcetera.

Andy:

And she was doing a lot of shorts. I mean, a lot of in those early days, especially, like, between la la point court and Cleo from 5 to 7, she did, like, 5 short films, and and she would kind of continue to do a lot of shorts through through those early years and through her career and a a lot of that style. And I guess this was kind of part of her what she was bringing to the French new wave is this balance between narrative and documentary and kind of, like, how can you blend these into a new thing?

Carrie:

And and and she did. I mean, her her feature films, meaning kind of the, fiction films

Andy:

Yeah.

Carrie:

Are all shot in real places on actual buses or, you know, streets of streets of, Paris or villages nearby. And, they have a documentary feel, and they have a universal feel because they're about capital a, big themes. You would have Le Bonheur, the happiness, which is about marriage and infidelity. You have Cleo from 5 to 7, which is about, in part, about cancer and real time. You have Le Critiqueur, which is pretty unclassifiable as many of our movies are, which is about a a writer with writer's block who is trying to figure out a mystery that's happening happening around him in this vacation town as his wife gets pregnant.

Carrie:

You know, he's trying to be creative, and his wife is procreative, and it's like the man's place and the woman's place. And I think it's a little bit of a satire about the difference between, you know, men and women in in within a marriage, and it's also a mystery about an oligarch who's trying to run the town. So it's

Andy:

So many times.

Carrie:

Yeah. It's about a little too many Yeah. Things for my taste.

Andy:

Yeah.

Carrie:

But, yes, I I would say it's maybe my least favorite film of hers, but it has one of the great openings of all time.

Andy:

But I think just, like, just you can get a sense of the way that she was exploring all of those different elements. That does fit into kind of this idea of the French new wave trying to shake things up and and break from the traditional way that films are being told and locked into these stages and everything and and this level of artifice. And this is kind of completely different. And in the and also in the the era of the auteur, which is that whole thing that's also rising, she's bringing something that is very much her own to her films.

Carrie:

Right. I mean, she she when she was young and went to college, she went to the Scuite du Louvre, the the Louvre School, which trained anthropologists and curators and painters. And she was very interested in being, a curator initially, and then she decided she really didn't like the Ecole de Louvre, but she learned a lot. And then she went to the Sorbonne, where she audited classes for a year or so. And she loved her classes, but she didn't like getting grades.

Carrie:

She didn't like taking tests. She wanted to be an artist, and she what she didn't think she was a good enough painter. And when she was in finished her high school studies, her mother gave her a gift of a used Rolleiflex camera that was bought from a, crime reporter. She had this camera, and she decided, you know, I'll become a photographer. I'll go to I'll get I'll get my license, because, France is very bureaucratic, and, you know, film directors, photographers have to have you know, be licensed to make Sure.

Carrie:

To make money in these fields. Right. And in America, we don't really require filmmakers to be licensed. Yeah. Right.

Carrie:

Those are the photographers for that matter. Right. But the but you're right about short films. That that was short films are were hugely important in France in that they you didn't have to start out making a whole feature. You could learn with shorts and then expand to, larger scale or longer time based work.

Andy:

Yeah. Right.

Carrie:

It makes sense.

Andy:

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Carrie:

But, you know, Varda didn't understand that when she set out to make a movie, so she made a a feature. And she really had never or she'd edited her photos before, but she'd never edit

Andy:

Yeah. A little different.

Carrie:

A little bit different. Really you know, she didn't know the basic things about going from scene to scene. And with her first movie, there were no, you know, backup shots in case she wanted to go from a to b. So a lot of Love Pointe Court goes from, like, a to d and then back to a. You know, it's kind of it's kind of jumpy.

Carrie:

And but Varda didn't even know about how to connect these images because she don't you know, really only dealt with theater up to that point.

Andy:

It's amazing. Well, the book is called A Complicated Passion, the life and work of Agnes Varda. It's, it's available right now. Can people go pick it up?

Carrie:

It's available right now. It's been out for since August 13th. You can get it at your local bookstore or order it from your local bookstore. You can, get it on Amazon. You can get it pretty much wherever.

Andy:

All the different places. Well, we'll have a link for it in the show notes, you know, if, certainly somebody who has a fascinating life, and there's a lot more that we didn't even touch on in this short conversation, but, it's definitely worth a look. So everybody, click on the link and check it out. Carrie Rickey's, book about Agnes Varda. Carrie, thank you so much for joining me on this on this little bonus episode on CinemaScope.

Andy:

I appreciate you being here. Thank

Carrie:

you so much for having me.

Andy:

Thanks for tuning in to this episode. We'll be back next time with another genre. Our next episode is gonna be about Italian giallo films, so tune in for that.