Cléo From 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)

Antoine Bourseiller and Corinne Marchand in Cléo From 5 to 7

Florence "Cléo" Victoire: Corinne Marchand
Antoine: Antoine Bourseiller
Angèle: Dominique Davray
Dorothée: Dorothée Blanck
Bob the Pianist: Michel Legrand
The Lover: José Luis de Vilallonga
Irma, the Fortune-Teller: Loye Payen
The Taxi Driver: Lucienne Marchand
Plumitif, the Lyricist: Serge Korber

Director: Agnès Varda
Screenplay: Agnès Varda
Cinematography: Paul Bonis, Alain Levent, Jean Rabier
Production design: Jean-François Adam
Film editing: Pascale Laverrière, Janine Verneau
Music: Michel Legrand

Has any director ever so successfully combined the keen editorial eye of the documentary filmmaker with the storytelling gifts of the creator of fictional films as Agnès Varda? From the beginning, with the vivid setting of the small Mediterranean fishing community of La Pointe Courte (1955) serving as background and correlative for the troubles of a married couple, Varda has known how to reverse Marianne Moore's formula of "imaginary gardens with real toads in them" and tell stories about imaginary people in real places. The real place in Cléo From 5 to 7 is the city of Paris, where Varda continually finds ways to enhance her slice-of-life story of pop-singer Cléo, waiting out the results of a medical test that she is sure will doom her to death from cancer. When her protagonist leaves the sanctuary of her apartment and wanders the streets of the city, Varda continually finds little bits of memento mori to insert into the frame, such as the Pompes Funèbres sign on a mortician's place of business that we glimpse from the windows of the bus in which Cléo is riding. It's not done with a heavy hand, but rather with a slyly macabre irony, for Cléo is as much a target of Varda's wry humor as she is an object of concern. We glimpse her vanity and frivolity and superstition while we also feel sympathy with her anxiety and fear of death.

Bay of Angels (Jacques Demy, 1963)

Claude Mann and Jeanne Moreau in Bay of Angels

Jacqueline ("Jackie") Demaistre: Jeanne Moreau
Jean Fournier: Claude Mann
Caron: Paul Guers
M. Fournier: Henri Nassiet
Hotel Clerk: Conchita Parodi

Director: Jacques Demy
Screenplay: Jacques Demy
Cinematography: Jean Rabier
Music: Michel Legrand

A platinum blond Jeanne Moreau, dressed in white, evokes Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946), though Moreau's Jackie Demaistre is not so lethal as Turner's Cora Smith. Jackie is modeling herself on both Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy, but without Monroe's fragility or the American Jackie's poise. In short, the Jackie Demaistre crafted by Moreau and Jacques Demy is her own woman, and one of film's most memorable. She is a compulsive gambler, whose habit has estranged her from her husband and her small son, but she carries on nevertheless, winning big and losing big, yet somehow surviving even when she bets away her train ticket home -- or more likely, to the next casino. Into her circuit wanders a young bank clerk on his vacation, Jean Fournier, who has been introduced to the gambling life by a co-worker. Jean thinks gambling is immoral, yet once he gets a taste for it, and more to the point, once he meets Jackie, he flings himself headlong into the life. Unfortunately, Jean is played by an actor making his first film, Claude Mann, who although he has a handsome presence is not able to make the character into a coherent figure. Sometimes broody, sometimes violent, sometimes philosophical, sometimes just a callow young man with no aim in life, Jean is mostly obsessed with Jackie, who is obsessed with gambling. She returns his affection in her way, which means that if he stands between her and the roulette wheel, he'd better watch out. She takes up with him because she thinks he brings her luck, and their relationship frays when he doesn't. If Moreau had had someone more compelling than Mann to play against -- one of the hyphenated Jeans, Belmondo or Trintignant, for example -- Bay of Angels might have blown me away. As it is, it's just one of those quintessential French films of the 1960s -- a bit wispy as it comes to plot but full of atmosphere, much of it provided by the casinos of the Riviera and Michel Legrand's score. It has many enthusiastic admirers, but I have a feeling most of the enthusiasm was generated by Moreau, who could always blind one to the defects of her movies.

Le Bonheur (Agnès Varda, 1965)

François Chevalier: Jean-Claude Drouot
Thérèse Chevalier: Claire Drouot
Émilie Savignard: Marie-France Boyer
Gisou Chevalier: Sandrine Drouot
Pierrot Chevalier: Olivier Drouot

Director: Agnès Varda
Screenplay: Agnès Varda
Cinematography: Claude Beausoleil, Jean Rabier
Film editing: Janine Verneau

A summer idyll set to the music of Mozart -- what could be more charming and pleasant, especially when it's filmed in such ravishingly beautiful color? It features a handsome young working-class couple, François and Thérèse, and their two adorably well-behaved children. He's a carpenter, she's a dressmaker, and they are obviously blissful, taking the kids on excursions in the countryside where, while the little ones nap, they make love. Happiness indeed. And then he goes on a business trip and meets the very pretty Émilie who works in the post office and is about to move to the very Parisian suburb, Fontenay-aux-Roses, where François and Thérèse live. He agrees to build shelves in Émilie's new apartment and she becomes his mistress. This doesn't diminish his love for Thérèse, however. Indeed, it only increases his happiness. He's so happy, in fact, that Thérèse notices it and, one day when they're on an excursion to the countryside and the children are down for their naps again, she asks him why he has become so happy lately. After hedging for a few moments, he tells her the truth. He explains that they and the children are like an apple orchard in a field, and that one day he saw another apple tree growing outside the field, blooming along with them: "More flowers, more apples," he burbles. Thérèse not only seems to understand this analogy, but she and François then make passionate love. But at this point Agnès Varda's carefully crafted idyll turns savagely, searingly ironic -- which is what we should have known this portrait of an improbably perfect family was all along. With the aid of skillful photography and clever editing, Varda has crafted an enticing fable about sex, marriage, male egotism, and female enabling of it. Is the story tragic or comic? Is François a fool or a cad? Is Thérèse willfully blind? Is Émilie naive or wicked? How are we to take the film's ending, with its switch from summery to autumnal? There aren't many films that manage to be so satisfying and so tantalizing at the same time.

Watched on Filmstruck Criterion Channel