Women in history: Agnès Varda, the lady of cinema

THEthe first cinema memory by Agnès Varda is a film that for her was simply “detestable”: Snow White. “With that stupid girl who’s a waitress for the seven dwarfs,” she commented. But also All together passionately made her furious: “The story of a housekeeper who takes care of fourteen children, gets married and continues to work without being paid.”

Agnès Varda had a very clear idea of ​​cinema and life (especially women’s lives).. And he didn’t hesitate to make it public, in words and images. When, in 2015, we were in his wonderful house-workshop in via Daguerre 88 – flowery courtyard, bright pink facade at the end of a narrow street 14th arrondissement of Paris – we weren’t just talking about films. «Tout est mélangé» he told us. Everything mixes.

She, after all, was not a woman for exclusives and, even if in these days at the Cannes festival we go up and down the steps that lead to the Salle Varda dedicated to herAgnès, born Arlette (on May 30, 1928 in Ixelles, Belgium, to a French mother and a Greek father), was not just a filmmaker. From the beginning and long before the term multitasking was created, what would later be defined with a reductive label “the only female representative of the Nouvelle Vague” had taken his first steps as photographer at the Théâtre national populaire by Jean Vilar and Gérard Philippeafter studying art in Paris. And throughout his career he will move with ease from photography to cinema, from feature films to short films, from documentaries to narrative.

Agnès Varda He made his directorial debut in 1954 with La Pointe Courte (a film that recorded the wanderings through the streets of Sète of a couple about to separate, Silvia Monfort and Philippe Noiret, and the digressions on the life of the local inhabitants), and immediately it fuses a very literary cinema with a documentary visionin a very free narrative to which the critics initially reacted lukewarmly, only to change their minds (Truffaut above all) years later.

More daring than cinephile

That film was the result of the need to combine the few resources the director had at her disposal and her very limited background: at the time, she swore, she had only seen about ten films, it was Alain Resnais who revealed to her that there was a Cinémathèque in Paris: «My total ignorance of good films, both classic and recent, allowed me to be bold at that moment».

It will never stop being so. With choices that combine cinema and politics (documentaries Greetings to the Cubans from 1963, Black Panthers of 1968, the collective film Loin du Vietnam of 1967, filmed in the American period, and The one song, the other song of 1977, on the right to abortion) and private life. When she becomes pregnant with her daughter Rosalie, she chooses not to marry. «Unheard of in the 1950s. People labeled you “unmarried mother”. And it was even less acceptable to be happy instead of ashamed” he remembered. She doesn’t mind going against current morality at all: this is why she photographs herself pregnant, naked, from every angle. It’s 1958, he’s 30 years old.

The masterpiece: Cléo from 5 to 7

Towards the Nouvelle Vague she is more of a temporary companion than a true member of the club. And, among critics today there are those who think that it was indeed La Pointe Courtefive years before Until my last breath by Jean Luc Godard, starting the movement that would change the history of cinema forever. Unlike the “young Turks”, all critics of the Cahiers du Cinema (in addition to Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol), Agnès’s desire does not arise from cinephilia and the analysis of other people’s films. She rather, he belonged to the so-called “left bank” family, that of Alain Resnais (which he had mounted La Pointe Courte and a few years later he would film Hiroshima mon amour) and Chris Marker, the future author of La Jetée And Sans soleil.

Agnès Varda’s first recognized masterpiece came in 1962: Cléo from 5 to 7 certainly echoes the works of Godard and Truffaut, but above all Lola by Jacques Demy, a director whom Agnès had met at the Tours Festival in 1958 and who would remain her companion until her death. Cléo from 5 to 7 follows, almost in real time, the life of a singer (Corinne Marchand) while waiting to receive the results of medical tests, fearing she has cancer. Varda also writes the songs for the film, then set to music by Michel Legrand, including the famous one Sans toi.

Three years and several short films later it arrives Le Bonheurin Italian The green meadow of lovestory of a carpenter who loves two women at the same time; a spring, rural film, immersed in Mozart’s music, with simple characters, with an almost old-fashioned kindness, but capable of an unexpected harshness in the finish. It’s from 1987 Kung Fu Mastera love story between a woman in her forties (Jane Birkin) and a boy of fourteen (Agnès’ son, Mathieu Demy, still an actor, we have just seen in The richest woman in the world).

Traveling to the end

Varda collect prizes: Without shelter or law with the discovery of Sandrine Bonnaire in 1985 he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festivalin 2001 she was awarded the César for lifetime achievement, in 2015 the honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2017 and the Berlinale Kamera in 2019.

In all that time Agnès never changes domicile. On Rue Daguerre, inside a former printing house, he had given life to Ciné-Tamaris, his production company (now directed by his children), which was also a real home, atelier and, today we would say, a co-working space. Around her there were always cats and young people, often young women. His non-conformism was not limited to the choice, never denied, of the two-tone bob. At 88 he will travel again, this time with the artist JR, fifty years his juniorto turn Visages villagesnot his best film, but an Oscar nominee. On board a truck, the two friends go to meet and photograph the inhabitants of the most remote villages in France. Autobiography, social issues and poetry: his usual style.

A few days before her death it was announced that Varda was completing preparations for a photography exhibition and two installations for the Chaumont-sur-Loire International Garden Festival. Varda loved trees, potatoes (especially the heart-shaped, non-compliant ones, to which he dedicated Patatutopiawho participated in the Venice Biennale in 2003) and picnics: no wonder he wanted to put his finishing touch on a garden. Godard declared mischievously to Olivier Séguret (who reports it in his book Godard vif): «The one who will survive us is Agnès Varda! Ha, ha! And then he will have an exhibition. A triptych, like a medieval altarpiece, called “Nouvelle Vague”, which he will exhibit at Cartier».

His latest film, Varda par Agnèsis actually a self-portrait in the form of a master class. Much earlier, in 1990, he had directed Garage Demi in which he reconstructed the childhood of his companion Jacques Demy (the author of Les parapluies de Cherbourgwhere he had Catherine Deneuve sing)who would soon die from complications of AIDS: Varda gracefully frames the sick man’s hands, but fails to mention the cause of death and is harshly criticized for this. Only much later, in 2008, with Les plages d’Agnèswill address the true causes of Demy’s death: by choosing silence he had respected his partner’s wishes.

Varda had always spoken with great naturalness about her love for Jacques Demy and how the two of them were “absolutely a couple, from start to finish and even in between, despite their differences.” Demy was buried in the Montparnasse cemetery in 1990; 29 years later, Agnès found a place next to him.

Two exhibitions dedicated to Agnès Varda

There are two exhibitions dedicated to Agnès Varda: in Bologna Long live Varda! Cinema is female at the Modernissimo gallery until 10 January 2027 brings together photos, memorabilia, costumes, films and installations. Until May 25th at Villa Medici, in Rome, Agnès Varda – Here and there, between Paris and Rome, collection of photographs taken in the French capital and in Italy, during two trips, in 1959 and 1963, including a visit to the set of Contempt by Godard.