Most history books tie the beginning of the French New Wave with the release of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless in 1959. But that is to ignore Agnes Varda’s debut feature, La Pointe Courte (1955). Varda’s second feature, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a marvelous real-time portrait of a young pop singer, Cléo Victoire (Corinne Marchand) one evening in Paris as she nervously awaits the results from a biopsy. Despite her anxiety, Cléo is essentially young and frivolous; it’s this discrepancy that makes the film so charming and so poignant: most of the action is as trivial as, well, trying on different hats, yet these superficial moments of everyday life are accentuated by the understanding that Cléo’s time is numbered. This sense of impermanence is itself balanced by the novelty of the film playing out in real time… and seeing it today, more than sixty years later, it’s also an astonishingly vivid time capsule, transporting us to an era of giddy reinvention.
Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina, Eddie Constantine, Sami Frey, Danièle Delorme, Jean-Claude Brialy and Yves Robert appear in a silent film-within-the film, and composer Michel Legrand also has a small role as Bob, Cléo’s piano player.
Cléo from 5 to 7 came in at #14 in Sight & Sound’s 2020 poll of the greatest films ever made.
Sunday’s Pantheon screening will be preceded by a 15 minute introductory lecture and feature a book club-style discussion afterwards.
Mar 17: Introduced by Su-Anne Yeo, who researches and teaches in the areas of film studies, media studies, and cultural studies, with a specialization in Asian and Asian diasporic screen cultures at UBC and Emily Carr.
So elegant, so stylish, so extremely and eternally cool.
Luke Buckmaster, The Guardian
With the kind of playfulness that Varda enjoyed so much, we could call this ticking-clock film timeless. From the feminist analysis of a woman’s commodified beauty and a celebrity’s self-regarding narcissism to the vulnerable heroine acting out her messy emotions in public, the spectre of war and the fear of disease darkening a midsummer day, Cléo from 5 to 7 feels pertinent to the modern moment. It always will. Marchand’s Cléo was pinned in a point in time, but the film marches on, playing on a loop in our imaginations.
Pamela Hutchinson, Sight & Sound
Presented by
Agnès Varda
Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dominique Davray, Dorothée Blank, Michel Legrand
France
1961
In French with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Producer
Georges de Beauregard
Screenwriter
Agnès Varda
Cinematography
Jean Rabier, Alain Levent, Paul Bonis
Editor
Janine Verneau, Pascale Laverrière
Original Music
Michel Legrand
Also in This Series
Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise)
The crowning glory of classical French cinema, this sumptuous melodrama brings to life the early 19th century Boulevard du Crime in Paris, where popular audiences for mime shows and carnival rub shoulders with wealthy patrons of classical theatre.
The Wild Bunch (Director's Cut)
The Mexico/Texas borderlands, 1913: Pike (William Holden) leads his gang of aging outlaws on a foray south for one last hurrah. Peckinpah's masterpiece, a savage lament for men who believe in nothing but find respect by dying in vain.
The Ascent
During the darkest winter of WWII, two Soviet partisans venture through the backwoods of Belarus in search of food, always at risk of falling into enemy hands. In her masterpiece Larisa Shepitko zeroes in on profound spiritual and philosophical themes.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Céline Sciamma's queer costume drama -- about a painter covertly studying a young noblewoman who refuses to sit for her portrait -- was voted 30th Greatest Film Ever Made in a 2022 poll, the highest ranking film of the past decade.
I Am Cuba
Infused with a palpable love for the country and a righteous anger at the injustices of the Batista era, I Am Cuba features some of the jaw-dropping camerawork ever filmed. A euphoric celebration of Cuba, the Revolution, and revolutionary cinema.
The Colour of Pomegranates + The House Is Black
This month's Pantheon screening is a double-bill, Sergei Parajanov's extraordinary evocation of the life and work of C18th Armenian poet Sayat Nova, and, The House is Black (22 min), the only film directed by the great Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad.
Fantasia
Walt Disney pushed the boundaries of animation and sound recording when he put together a movie concert: eight classical pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Stravinski et al, each animated in a different style. It's playful, sometimes cute, other times inspired.
Image: © Disney, 1940