Senior
Cleo from 5 to 7
Definition
With Cleo from 5 to 7, Agnès Varda made a notable entry into the Nouvelle Vague movement (although La Pointe courte had already signaled it). Set in Paris, the action takes place in real time on June 21, 1961. Cleo from 5 to 7 tells the story of a young and beautiful variety singer who anxiously awaits the results of a medical analysis. Confined to the role of a frivolous "doll" that everyone spoils without seeking to understand her, Cleo suddenly becomes aware of the vanity of her existence. After an emotional shock, she goes out into the street and begins to observe the world around her. A young soldier on leave from the Algerian War helps her overcome her fear of cancer. Made during the summer of 1961, Cleo is Agnès Varda's second feature film, a 33-year-old former photographer who became a filmmaker in 1954. The film adheres to some of the principles of the Nouvelle Vague, a movement that would profoundly renew the way films were made in France in the late 1950s.
Why is Cleo from 5 to 7 a film made with what one has on hand?
- a filmmaker who writes her own screenplay, shooting in natural settings, and new performers. Varda surrounded herself with novice actors, chosen for their proximity to their characters: Corinne
Marchand (Cleo) was a music-hall singer, Michel Legrand (Bob) a genuine film composer.
What is striking is that it was directed by a woman and places another woman at the center of a story that lasts the exact duration of the screening, namely 1 hour and 30 minutes. The press also extensively discussed the resonant connection between two major concerns of the time: the fear of cancer with the character of Cleo and the Algerian War with the character of Antoine.
The use of mirrors in the film:
Cleo's journey in Paris is marked by a series of pauses in which the heroine tirelessly questions her image reflected in various mirrors she encounters along her path. In the fortune teller's hallway, Cleo reassures herself through narcissistic contemplation of her unaltered image. In the first café, she sees a divided image that materializes the personality disturbance she is going through. In the hat boutique, the mirrors reflect a fragmented body: Cleo is reduced to the state of an erotic object. Once out in the street, she searches for her image in a broken mirror: this time, the contemplation of her reflection no longer calms her. Finally, upon leaving a film screening, her friend Dorothée breaks her compact mirror. Behind this banal incident, Cleo sees a sign of death that awakens her old superstitions.
The interpretation of the song "Sans toi" suddenly makes her realize that she is only an icy image, an appearance without content.
Time:
Throughout the film, objective time represents a threat to the heroine: it indicates the duration separating her from the announcement of her medical results. This objective time is materialized in two ways in the film. In the soundtrack: through music that becomes more or less intense as Cleo leaves her house. In the image: through the abundance of clocks and timers.
In Cleo's life, subjective time often dominates. A time that sometimes stretches like an elastic (the bus ride), sometimes contracts (the first taxi ride), or other times stops and stands still (when she descends the fortune teller's staircase). As the verdict approaches, a certainty arises: thanks to the calming presence of Antoine, Cleo seems to have tamed time. She ceases to be its puppet and surprises herself by domesticating it. "It seems to me that I am no longer afraid. It seems to me that I am happy," she will say.
Two types of time emphasized in this film: objective time (clock time) and subjective time (consciousness time).
Light:
Varda chose to immerse her heroine in an atmosphere of almost constant overexposure. For Cleo, this oppressive light is already a dissolution into nothingness, "a pale death, a white death, like in a hospital," says Varda. Thus, Cleo's studio, flooded with this white light, appears empty to us; it lacks the human warmth that the singer so desperately needs. In the street, the light is aggressive: it mercilessly sculpts faces and makes certain beings monstrous. Finally, for the scene in the Montsouris Park, Varda asked her cinematographer to use a green filter to make the lawns "creamy, snowy, and unrealistic." In Cleo, light is therefore a full-fledged element of language.
Illness:
the emergence of this illness (cancer) in French society at the time:
A painting by Hans Baldung Grien, "The Young Girl and Death" (1517).
Literature inspired by Agnès Varda: Denis Diderot's novel "Jacques the Fatalist and His Master" evoked wandering in Paris.
A documentary about Paris:
Varda chose, for a large number of scenes, to respect the true distances and to set up her cameras in authentic Parisian places of life: cafes, streets, train station, public parks, etc. She endeavored not only to not alter their nature but also to fully convey their sociological truth on screen. The Café du Dôme is thus populated by the artists and students who frequented it. The Vavin intersection is animated by hustlers...
The setting here is not neutral: it anchors the character in a reality that resonates with her inner self or, on the contrary, functions as a disruptive element. Just as Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" can be seen as "a documentary about Paris in the summer of 1959," Cleo from 5 to 7 is a kind of documentary about Paris in June and July 1961.
- Periods and Movements
Through its production, the story of its documentary-style shooting, its aesthetic choices (natural settings, synchronous sound experiment, innovative editing without fixed rules, etc.), as well as its perspective on the era and its situated photography, Cleo from 5 to 7 falls within the methods and ambitions of the authors of the "Nouvelle Vague" with whom it engages in dialogue very consciously.
This deeply personal and incubating work nonetheless fine-tunes the Varda's gaze, which quickly frees itself from any assignment to a genre or movement.
- Receptions and Audiences
Whether in its success in cine-clubs, its numerous novelizations (including photo-novels), or its interpretation by American feminists from the 1970s to the 2000s, Cleo from 5 to 7 has provoked numerous variations and interpretations depending on the times, cultural areas, and events in the public sphere. For each of these reinterpretations, the recognition and legitimacy of this work are renewed.
Around these multiple readings, different communities of interpretation are formed, constituting changing audiences with whom the work enters into a dialogue in a game of reciprocal gazes.
Senior
Cleo from 5 to 7
Definition
With Cleo from 5 to 7, Agnès Varda made a notable entry into the Nouvelle Vague movement (although La Pointe courte had already signaled it). Set in Paris, the action takes place in real time on June 21, 1961. Cleo from 5 to 7 tells the story of a young and beautiful variety singer who anxiously awaits the results of a medical analysis. Confined to the role of a frivolous "doll" that everyone spoils without seeking to understand her, Cleo suddenly becomes aware of the vanity of her existence. After an emotional shock, she goes out into the street and begins to observe the world around her. A young soldier on leave from the Algerian War helps her overcome her fear of cancer. Made during the summer of 1961, Cleo is Agnès Varda's second feature film, a 33-year-old former photographer who became a filmmaker in 1954. The film adheres to some of the principles of the Nouvelle Vague, a movement that would profoundly renew the way films were made in France in the late 1950s.
Why is Cleo from 5 to 7 a film made with what one has on hand?
- a filmmaker who writes her own screenplay, shooting in natural settings, and new performers. Varda surrounded herself with novice actors, chosen for their proximity to their characters: Corinne
Marchand (Cleo) was a music-hall singer, Michel Legrand (Bob) a genuine film composer.
What is striking is that it was directed by a woman and places another woman at the center of a story that lasts the exact duration of the screening, namely 1 hour and 30 minutes. The press also extensively discussed the resonant connection between two major concerns of the time: the fear of cancer with the character of Cleo and the Algerian War with the character of Antoine.
The use of mirrors in the film:
Cleo's journey in Paris is marked by a series of pauses in which the heroine tirelessly questions her image reflected in various mirrors she encounters along her path. In the fortune teller's hallway, Cleo reassures herself through narcissistic contemplation of her unaltered image. In the first café, she sees a divided image that materializes the personality disturbance she is going through. In the hat boutique, the mirrors reflect a fragmented body: Cleo is reduced to the state of an erotic object. Once out in the street, she searches for her image in a broken mirror: this time, the contemplation of her reflection no longer calms her. Finally, upon leaving a film screening, her friend Dorothée breaks her compact mirror. Behind this banal incident, Cleo sees a sign of death that awakens her old superstitions.
The interpretation of the song "Sans toi" suddenly makes her realize that she is only an icy image, an appearance without content.
Time:
Throughout the film, objective time represents a threat to the heroine: it indicates the duration separating her from the announcement of her medical results. This objective time is materialized in two ways in the film. In the soundtrack: through music that becomes more or less intense as Cleo leaves her house. In the image: through the abundance of clocks and timers.
In Cleo's life, subjective time often dominates. A time that sometimes stretches like an elastic (the bus ride), sometimes contracts (the first taxi ride), or other times stops and stands still (when she descends the fortune teller's staircase). As the verdict approaches, a certainty arises: thanks to the calming presence of Antoine, Cleo seems to have tamed time. She ceases to be its puppet and surprises herself by domesticating it. "It seems to me that I am no longer afraid. It seems to me that I am happy," she will say.
Two types of time emphasized in this film: objective time (clock time) and subjective time (consciousness time).
Light:
Varda chose to immerse her heroine in an atmosphere of almost constant overexposure. For Cleo, this oppressive light is already a dissolution into nothingness, "a pale death, a white death, like in a hospital," says Varda. Thus, Cleo's studio, flooded with this white light, appears empty to us; it lacks the human warmth that the singer so desperately needs. In the street, the light is aggressive: it mercilessly sculpts faces and makes certain beings monstrous. Finally, for the scene in the Montsouris Park, Varda asked her cinematographer to use a green filter to make the lawns "creamy, snowy, and unrealistic." In Cleo, light is therefore a full-fledged element of language.
Illness:
the emergence of this illness (cancer) in French society at the time:
A painting by Hans Baldung Grien, "The Young Girl and Death" (1517).
Literature inspired by Agnès Varda: Denis Diderot's novel "Jacques the Fatalist and His Master" evoked wandering in Paris.
A documentary about Paris:
Varda chose, for a large number of scenes, to respect the true distances and to set up her cameras in authentic Parisian places of life: cafes, streets, train station, public parks, etc. She endeavored not only to not alter their nature but also to fully convey their sociological truth on screen. The Café du Dôme is thus populated by the artists and students who frequented it. The Vavin intersection is animated by hustlers...
The setting here is not neutral: it anchors the character in a reality that resonates with her inner self or, on the contrary, functions as a disruptive element. Just as Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" can be seen as "a documentary about Paris in the summer of 1959," Cleo from 5 to 7 is a kind of documentary about Paris in June and July 1961.
- Periods and Movements
Through its production, the story of its documentary-style shooting, its aesthetic choices (natural settings, synchronous sound experiment, innovative editing without fixed rules, etc.), as well as its perspective on the era and its situated photography, Cleo from 5 to 7 falls within the methods and ambitions of the authors of the "Nouvelle Vague" with whom it engages in dialogue very consciously.
This deeply personal and incubating work nonetheless fine-tunes the Varda's gaze, which quickly frees itself from any assignment to a genre or movement.
- Receptions and Audiences
Whether in its success in cine-clubs, its numerous novelizations (including photo-novels), or its interpretation by American feminists from the 1970s to the 2000s, Cleo from 5 to 7 has provoked numerous variations and interpretations depending on the times, cultural areas, and events in the public sphere. For each of these reinterpretations, the recognition and legitimacy of this work are renewed.
Around these multiple readings, different communities of interpretation are formed, constituting changing audiences with whom the work enters into a dialogue in a game of reciprocal gazes.
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