Agnes Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7: the most Distinctive Stylistic and Narrative features of French New Wave Cinema
By Daniel Blumensev
In France during the late 1950s, a new generation of young people was arising who were immersed in film journals and were regular goers of cine-clubs and art et essai or ‘art and experiment’ cinemas (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 407). This new generation was the first to have a clear awareness of the entire history of cinema, and they were dubbed as the Nouvelle Vague or the ‘French New Wave’ (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 404). Passionate about le cinéma, a group of these young people started out as critics for the influential film journal Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s (Temple and Witt 2004: 185). Figures like Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette successfully transitioned from film criticism to film production, making their feature debuts in the late 1950s and early 1960s as the government started financing their projects due to a decline of cinema attendees after 1958 (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 407). Arguably also part of the Nouvelle Vague, older and less cineaste individuals from the Rive Gauche or ‘left bank’ such as Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda and Georges Franju also made their mark in the French New Wave with breakthroughs and chef d’oeuvres such as Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959 Alain Resnais) and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad (1961 Alain Resnais) and Trans-Europ-Express (1966 Alain Robbe-Grillet). The French New Wave 1959-1967 was known for its innovations in filmmaking techniques as well as in narrative. The most dominant narrative techniques of the French New Wave Cinema were multiple presentations of events, a self-referential style and reflexivity, open-ended narratives and leisure-class lifestyle stories. The Nouvelle Vague’s most distinctive stylistic features were the plan-sequence or the ‘long-take’, the discontinuous editing and economic filming such as recording on the streets. Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962 Agnès Varda) is an unusual picture that covers ninety-five minutes in the life of a Parisian actress awaiting the results of a critical medical test. This film, although being a Rive Gauche picture, consists of many New Wave stylistic and narrative features.
The first distinctive narrative feature of French New Wave Cinema was the style in which the author presented the film’s events. ‘Directors [of the Nouvelle Vague] combined objective realism, subjective realism, and authorial commentary [in their work]….’ (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 406). In order to analyze how Varda uses this narrative technique in Cléo, one must first understand the structure and plot of the film itself. Cléo’s narrative structure consists of thirteen chapters, marked by time of day, having the film span from 5pm to 6:30pm. Throughout these chapters Cléo’s character develops from childhood to maturity: starting from constructing her star image by singing the lyrics of songs written for her, then transitioning into a phase of contemplative silence, through listening to others, developed through the handheld street scenes shooting style, and finally, into the acquisition of a speaking voice, with which she becomes confident in revealing her internal anxiety of cancer to Antoine, in the film’s final chapter (Powrie 2006: 116). Varda, sticking to the narrative techniques of the Nouvelle Vague, presents this simple yet touching plot, through objective and subjective realism, as well as authorial commentary.
The narrative form of objective realism was prevalent in postwar European art films, and it refers to a form in which the plot of a film consisted of chance events that often could not be incorporated into a linear cause-and-effect story line, as the events of those films happened randomly and without the subjective point of view and control of the protagonist (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 405). Objective realism is evident in Cléo as the film depicts a Parisian woman’s frolic through Paris over a period of one and a half hours, inviting anything to interact with her along the way, thus being documentary-like. Along with objective realism, with the film focusing on the day of a specific character: Cléo, Varda is obliged to incorporate at least a selected amount of narrative subjectivity to the film as well (Smith 1998: 60).
Subjective realism, being a representation of events presented through a particular eye, most commonly through that of a specific character’s in a film, is represented in Cléo through symbolism (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 405). When Cléo is walking through a busy city square she observes a performance going on: being a man eating frogs and then regurgitating them. This is symbolic because we already had a glimpse of Cléo’s ring representing a frog and a pearl (Cléo de 5 à 7, 1962). The pearl represents Cléo’s beauty: being what shelters her from her death, as, in the beginning of the film, she says: ‘Being ugly, that’s death… As long as I am beautiful, I am alive, and ten times more than others’ (Cléo de 5 à 7, 1962). However, after Cléo looks in the mirror and is unable to read her own fear in it, she realizes she is both pearl and frog (Powrie 2006: 118). In essence, after seeing the man swallowing frogs, Varda manipulates that realism into subjectivity as that image reminds Cléo of the ‘frog’ in her stomach: her cancer, and due to no longer being able to read her own fear, Cléo realizes that she is, although still beautiful, is at the same time a frog, because she will die from her cancer, thus being ugly, as death is ugliness, according to her (Powrie 2006: 118). Cléo then sees a man having his bicep pierced all the way through with a spear as well as later, a prematurely born baby being carried in an incubator. These two visceral scenes, along with the frog scene also develop the film’s subjective realism as the nauseating and repellant act of piercing your biceps as well as swallowing frogs, along with the poor site of a premature baby with its ambiguous future ahead of it, reflects the emotions that Cléo feels herself: being her own ambiguous future due to the uncertainty of her medical results as well as the nauseating fear of them.
The third narrative style in which Agnès Varda presents the events in Cléo is through authorial commentary, being the auteur’s contribution to the film, bringing his/her own meaning to the film (Ostrowska 2008: 147). This is evident in all three of the subjective realism examples given above, as due to having created meaning through images of frog swallowing and premature infants towards the subjective point of view of the film’s main character Cléo, one realizes that this is also authorial commentary as Varda herself is making the audience understand Cléo’s internal feelings, thus Varda makes her own mark and commentary on the film’s meaning. The other example of authorial commentary is all the references to the social and political context in which the film was set. Throughout the picture, Varda fits in three slightly obscure references to the actual time period of 1961, in which the film was shot, referring to the Algerian Putsch (Powrie 2006: 118). First having heard it on the taxi’s radio, then through two people discussing it in a café and finally through Antoine, Cléo’s romantic interest, telling her about his service there (Temple and Witt 2004: 249). Thus the film’s events are also told through authorial commentary as the author of the film: Agnès Varda, contributes to the narrative by including the events of the world during the actual time period of June 21, 1961, to Cléo’s story.
The second distinctive narrative feature of French New Wave Cinema is reflexivity. As stories in the films of the Nouvelle Vague became more loose and unspecified, they seemed to retreat from documenting the social world (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 406). The film itself became the only reality the director could claim. Along with young directors’ knowledge of the history of their medium, this retreat from documenting the world made film form and style self-referential (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 406). ‘Like modern painting and literature, film became reflexive, pointing to its own materials, structures and history’ (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 406). Although Varda, having a decent amount of documenting and objective realism in Cléo, she also follows the narrative style of reflexivity and self-referencing in her film. In Cléo, there is a scene in a projectionist’s booth in a cinema. The narrative of this scene is simply about Cléo’s friend having to stop by the cinema in order to give her boyfriend some film reels. However, there is a digression from the true story of the film: being about Cléo awaiting her medical results, to a full scene dedicated to a ‘court-metrage’ or short film that is shown in the cinema. The audiences get to see this entire short film. In another scene, a sharp eye would notice that there is a reference to Luis Buñuel’s 1929 surrealist classic Un Chien Andalou (1929 Luis Buñuel), which is written on a poster in the background of one scene. These two examples represent the narrative feature of reflexivity. First, in the projectionist’s booth we see a film within a film, which reflects the medium of filmmaking itself and acknowledges the actual mechanisms of illusion-making: the cinema and the projector. Second, the short silent film that we see stars New Wave cinema icons: Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina and Jean-Claude Brialy (Graham and Vincendeau 2009: 23). Thus, not only does this reflect filmmaking, but also references the Nouvelle Vague as well. Finally, a much more subtle reference to cinema itself and to the indebtedness to the history of the medium is the poster of Un Chien Andalou seen among other posters on a Parisian street wall in the background of one unspecific scene. Un Chien Andalou is a surrealist silent masterpiece, most probably a colossal inspiration to all the Nouvelle Vague directors. The film was directed by Luis Buñuel who was a prominent figure of Franco-Spanish cinema, famous for his surreal sexually explicit and political pictures of the 1960s and 1970s, starring New Wave giants. Thus, due to these two elements of reflexivity in Varda’s film, Cléo supports the narrative feature of reflexivity in French New Wave Cinema.
Open-ended narratives were a pivotal feature of French New Wave Cinema (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 406). In classic Hollywood, most films would have a clear narrative outcome, such as in City Lights (1931 Charlie Chaplin): the film ends with the blind girl being able to see and her and the tramp falling in love. However the Nouvelle Vague, contributing greatly to postwar cinematic modernism, left the endings of its pictures unclear and ambiguous, such as in Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959 François Truffaut) when the film freezes on Antoine Doinel in the foreground of the ocean, after having escaped the child detention facility, leaving the audience wondering about what is next for him, or when Jean-Paul Belmondo dies in the final scene of À Bout de Souffle (1960 Jean-Luc Godard) and the audiences are left wondering about the heroine’s true feelings towards the hero (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 406). Cléo also ends with an open-ended narrative in which Cléo and Antoine are walking together through the hospital gardens facing the camera in front of them, turning towards each other and smiling, and then they stop and turn towards each other and smile again, and then the film ends. We learn that Antoine doesn’t want to leave to Algeria anymore and that Cléo is not afraid anymore, and is happy. The question, as with many other Nouvelle Vague film endings arises: ‘What now?’ Will Antoine stay with Cléo or go back to Algeria? Will Cléo survive her cancer or will she die? Varda incorporates a perfect open-ending into her film making the viewers ask all these questions.
The economic boom after 1958 raised European living standards, which led to the strengthening of trends towards an urban leisure-class lifestyle (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 403). The outcomes of the economic boom greatly affected the narratives of French New Wave Cinema. Films such as L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, Le Mépris (1963 Jean-Luc Godard), La Peau Douce (1964 François Truffaut), and Pierrot Le Fou (1965 Jean-Luc Godard), all reflected a leisure-class lifestyle. Along with these pictures, Cléo’s narrative also features a great amount of the leisure-class lifestyle. ‘The idealism and political movements that spread immediately after the Second World War, gave way to a more apolitical culture of consumption and leisure’ (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 407). First of all, Cléo is a singer with only 3 hit singles and thus she tries to succeed in her career in order to gain a more leisure-like life. However, although not being incredibly successful in her career, Cléo still tries to gain the most leisure out of the life she has: lying in bed with her cats in an extravagant white mink coat, following the west’s trend of consumption by buying a new hat, and constantly checking her beauty.
One of the most distinctive stylistic features of French New Wave Cinema was the plan-séquence or the ‘sequence shot’ (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 404). This refers to the long-take, which is used so much in contemporary Hollywood that it has now become a gimmick. However in the late 1950s and early 1960s in France, the long-take was something new and modern. One of the first long-takes we see in Cléo is when the protagonist walks out of Madame Irma’s, the fortune teller’s, house and we track Cléo from a high angle as she walks down the street. This long-take symbolizes Cléo’s realization and attempt at acceptance that she most probably has cancer, and the plan-séquence also gives the film’s audiences time to take this morbid news in. Cléo has many long-takes, mostly subtle, such as of Cléo and Angèle frolicking in Cléo’s apartment and one of Cléo walking around a hat shop, as well as one with the camera in the middle of the back seat row of a taxi showing us the moving street scene, reminding modern viewers of Solaris’ (1972 Andrei Tarkovsky) driving through a futuristic highway sequence. Another effective long-take in Cléo, as with the tracking one, is the ending long-take. We observe Cléo and Antoine walking towards the audience, with the camera moving forward, as they both contemplate on what to do now: as Cléo has just found out that she does in fact have cancer and Antoine is not sure whether to leave or stay with Cléo. This long-take of the two characters walking is effective in keeping the tension of the narrative making the audiences as well as the characters be held, through the long-take, at this pensive moment, making both audiences and characters think of what to do now.
Innovations in equipment was what allowed Nouvelle Vague filmmakers to experiment with long-takes, due to lighter cameras, as well as experiment with other stylistic conventions (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 404). During the late 1950s and early 1960s, lighter cameras were created that did not need tripods, and reflex viewfinders came along as well as film stock that produced better exposure in lower light (Marie 2009: 78). Although this equipment was designed for documentary filmmakers, fiction directors immediately took advantage of it, being able to film scenes in the streets with lighter cameras, such as in Cléo, quicker and cheaper (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 404).
Another prevalent stylistic feature of the Nouvelle Vague is the discontinuous editing (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 404). Not seen since the silent era, young directors started to experiment with the power of fragmentary, discontinuous editing. ‘Older directors preferred smooth continuous editing and considered Soviet montage unrealistic and manipulative’ (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 404). In À Bout de Souffle, Godard cut bits of the film out from the middle of a sequence, creating jump cuts, disorientating viewers. Although Cléo does have a few very subtle ‘jump cuts’, these were most probably done without any profound purpose and simply incorporated due to the need to fix the edit. However Varda’s film makes use of the technique of fragmentary, discontinuous editing. After Cléo finds out she most probably has cancer in the first scene, she walks down the stairs. However as she is walking down we see a close up of her face moving into the camera, repeated 4 times. This editing technique symbolizes Cléo’s reluctance to accept her nearby death, thus through the repetition of the same shot, Varda makes Cléo want to extent her life, to repeat it, and have more time, before she dies (Orpen 2007: 25).
Cléo de 5 à 7 released in 1962, directed by Agnès Varda, is an incredibly inspirational and innovative Nouvelle Vague picture due to its use of original stylistic and narrative features and it, along with the entire Nouvelle Vague cinema, proved to be a major contributor to postwar cinematic modernism (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 412). The Nouvelle Vague’s most distinctive narrative techniques, as seen in Cléo, were multiple presentations of events, reflexivity, open-ended narratives and plots surrounding leisure-class lifestyles. Furthermore, innovations in equipment led to stylistic creativity such as the use of long takes in Cléo and directors also started experimenting with discontinuous editing and montage, replacing the dense staging that had been common after World War II, and inspiring the future of cinema, such as the American New Wave (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 412).
The first distinctive narrative feature of French New Wave Cinema was the style in which the author presented the film’s events. ‘Directors [of the Nouvelle Vague] combined objective realism, subjective realism, and authorial commentary [in their work]….’ (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 406). In order to analyze how Varda uses this narrative technique in Cléo, one must first understand the structure and plot of the film itself. Cléo’s narrative structure consists of thirteen chapters, marked by time of day, having the film span from 5pm to 6:30pm. Throughout these chapters Cléo’s character develops from childhood to maturity: starting from constructing her star image by singing the lyrics of songs written for her, then transitioning into a phase of contemplative silence, through listening to others, developed through the handheld street scenes shooting style, and finally, into the acquisition of a speaking voice, with which she becomes confident in revealing her internal anxiety of cancer to Antoine, in the film’s final chapter (Powrie 2006: 116). Varda, sticking to the narrative techniques of the Nouvelle Vague, presents this simple yet touching plot, through objective and subjective realism, as well as authorial commentary.
The narrative form of objective realism was prevalent in postwar European art films, and it refers to a form in which the plot of a film consisted of chance events that often could not be incorporated into a linear cause-and-effect story line, as the events of those films happened randomly and without the subjective point of view and control of the protagonist (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 405). Objective realism is evident in Cléo as the film depicts a Parisian woman’s frolic through Paris over a period of one and a half hours, inviting anything to interact with her along the way, thus being documentary-like. Along with objective realism, with the film focusing on the day of a specific character: Cléo, Varda is obliged to incorporate at least a selected amount of narrative subjectivity to the film as well (Smith 1998: 60).
Subjective realism, being a representation of events presented through a particular eye, most commonly through that of a specific character’s in a film, is represented in Cléo through symbolism (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 405). When Cléo is walking through a busy city square she observes a performance going on: being a man eating frogs and then regurgitating them. This is symbolic because we already had a glimpse of Cléo’s ring representing a frog and a pearl (Cléo de 5 à 7, 1962). The pearl represents Cléo’s beauty: being what shelters her from her death, as, in the beginning of the film, she says: ‘Being ugly, that’s death… As long as I am beautiful, I am alive, and ten times more than others’ (Cléo de 5 à 7, 1962). However, after Cléo looks in the mirror and is unable to read her own fear in it, she realizes she is both pearl and frog (Powrie 2006: 118). In essence, after seeing the man swallowing frogs, Varda manipulates that realism into subjectivity as that image reminds Cléo of the ‘frog’ in her stomach: her cancer, and due to no longer being able to read her own fear, Cléo realizes that she is, although still beautiful, is at the same time a frog, because she will die from her cancer, thus being ugly, as death is ugliness, according to her (Powrie 2006: 118). Cléo then sees a man having his bicep pierced all the way through with a spear as well as later, a prematurely born baby being carried in an incubator. These two visceral scenes, along with the frog scene also develop the film’s subjective realism as the nauseating and repellant act of piercing your biceps as well as swallowing frogs, along with the poor site of a premature baby with its ambiguous future ahead of it, reflects the emotions that Cléo feels herself: being her own ambiguous future due to the uncertainty of her medical results as well as the nauseating fear of them.
The third narrative style in which Agnès Varda presents the events in Cléo is through authorial commentary, being the auteur’s contribution to the film, bringing his/her own meaning to the film (Ostrowska 2008: 147). This is evident in all three of the subjective realism examples given above, as due to having created meaning through images of frog swallowing and premature infants towards the subjective point of view of the film’s main character Cléo, one realizes that this is also authorial commentary as Varda herself is making the audience understand Cléo’s internal feelings, thus Varda makes her own mark and commentary on the film’s meaning. The other example of authorial commentary is all the references to the social and political context in which the film was set. Throughout the picture, Varda fits in three slightly obscure references to the actual time period of 1961, in which the film was shot, referring to the Algerian Putsch (Powrie 2006: 118). First having heard it on the taxi’s radio, then through two people discussing it in a café and finally through Antoine, Cléo’s romantic interest, telling her about his service there (Temple and Witt 2004: 249). Thus the film’s events are also told through authorial commentary as the author of the film: Agnès Varda, contributes to the narrative by including the events of the world during the actual time period of June 21, 1961, to Cléo’s story.
The second distinctive narrative feature of French New Wave Cinema is reflexivity. As stories in the films of the Nouvelle Vague became more loose and unspecified, they seemed to retreat from documenting the social world (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 406). The film itself became the only reality the director could claim. Along with young directors’ knowledge of the history of their medium, this retreat from documenting the world made film form and style self-referential (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 406). ‘Like modern painting and literature, film became reflexive, pointing to its own materials, structures and history’ (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 406). Although Varda, having a decent amount of documenting and objective realism in Cléo, she also follows the narrative style of reflexivity and self-referencing in her film. In Cléo, there is a scene in a projectionist’s booth in a cinema. The narrative of this scene is simply about Cléo’s friend having to stop by the cinema in order to give her boyfriend some film reels. However, there is a digression from the true story of the film: being about Cléo awaiting her medical results, to a full scene dedicated to a ‘court-metrage’ or short film that is shown in the cinema. The audiences get to see this entire short film. In another scene, a sharp eye would notice that there is a reference to Luis Buñuel’s 1929 surrealist classic Un Chien Andalou (1929 Luis Buñuel), which is written on a poster in the background of one scene. These two examples represent the narrative feature of reflexivity. First, in the projectionist’s booth we see a film within a film, which reflects the medium of filmmaking itself and acknowledges the actual mechanisms of illusion-making: the cinema and the projector. Second, the short silent film that we see stars New Wave cinema icons: Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina and Jean-Claude Brialy (Graham and Vincendeau 2009: 23). Thus, not only does this reflect filmmaking, but also references the Nouvelle Vague as well. Finally, a much more subtle reference to cinema itself and to the indebtedness to the history of the medium is the poster of Un Chien Andalou seen among other posters on a Parisian street wall in the background of one unspecific scene. Un Chien Andalou is a surrealist silent masterpiece, most probably a colossal inspiration to all the Nouvelle Vague directors. The film was directed by Luis Buñuel who was a prominent figure of Franco-Spanish cinema, famous for his surreal sexually explicit and political pictures of the 1960s and 1970s, starring New Wave giants. Thus, due to these two elements of reflexivity in Varda’s film, Cléo supports the narrative feature of reflexivity in French New Wave Cinema.
Open-ended narratives were a pivotal feature of French New Wave Cinema (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 406). In classic Hollywood, most films would have a clear narrative outcome, such as in City Lights (1931 Charlie Chaplin): the film ends with the blind girl being able to see and her and the tramp falling in love. However the Nouvelle Vague, contributing greatly to postwar cinematic modernism, left the endings of its pictures unclear and ambiguous, such as in Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959 François Truffaut) when the film freezes on Antoine Doinel in the foreground of the ocean, after having escaped the child detention facility, leaving the audience wondering about what is next for him, or when Jean-Paul Belmondo dies in the final scene of À Bout de Souffle (1960 Jean-Luc Godard) and the audiences are left wondering about the heroine’s true feelings towards the hero (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 406). Cléo also ends with an open-ended narrative in which Cléo and Antoine are walking together through the hospital gardens facing the camera in front of them, turning towards each other and smiling, and then they stop and turn towards each other and smile again, and then the film ends. We learn that Antoine doesn’t want to leave to Algeria anymore and that Cléo is not afraid anymore, and is happy. The question, as with many other Nouvelle Vague film endings arises: ‘What now?’ Will Antoine stay with Cléo or go back to Algeria? Will Cléo survive her cancer or will she die? Varda incorporates a perfect open-ending into her film making the viewers ask all these questions.
The economic boom after 1958 raised European living standards, which led to the strengthening of trends towards an urban leisure-class lifestyle (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 403). The outcomes of the economic boom greatly affected the narratives of French New Wave Cinema. Films such as L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, Le Mépris (1963 Jean-Luc Godard), La Peau Douce (1964 François Truffaut), and Pierrot Le Fou (1965 Jean-Luc Godard), all reflected a leisure-class lifestyle. Along with these pictures, Cléo’s narrative also features a great amount of the leisure-class lifestyle. ‘The idealism and political movements that spread immediately after the Second World War, gave way to a more apolitical culture of consumption and leisure’ (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 407). First of all, Cléo is a singer with only 3 hit singles and thus she tries to succeed in her career in order to gain a more leisure-like life. However, although not being incredibly successful in her career, Cléo still tries to gain the most leisure out of the life she has: lying in bed with her cats in an extravagant white mink coat, following the west’s trend of consumption by buying a new hat, and constantly checking her beauty.
One of the most distinctive stylistic features of French New Wave Cinema was the plan-séquence or the ‘sequence shot’ (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 404). This refers to the long-take, which is used so much in contemporary Hollywood that it has now become a gimmick. However in the late 1950s and early 1960s in France, the long-take was something new and modern. One of the first long-takes we see in Cléo is when the protagonist walks out of Madame Irma’s, the fortune teller’s, house and we track Cléo from a high angle as she walks down the street. This long-take symbolizes Cléo’s realization and attempt at acceptance that she most probably has cancer, and the plan-séquence also gives the film’s audiences time to take this morbid news in. Cléo has many long-takes, mostly subtle, such as of Cléo and Angèle frolicking in Cléo’s apartment and one of Cléo walking around a hat shop, as well as one with the camera in the middle of the back seat row of a taxi showing us the moving street scene, reminding modern viewers of Solaris’ (1972 Andrei Tarkovsky) driving through a futuristic highway sequence. Another effective long-take in Cléo, as with the tracking one, is the ending long-take. We observe Cléo and Antoine walking towards the audience, with the camera moving forward, as they both contemplate on what to do now: as Cléo has just found out that she does in fact have cancer and Antoine is not sure whether to leave or stay with Cléo. This long-take of the two characters walking is effective in keeping the tension of the narrative making the audiences as well as the characters be held, through the long-take, at this pensive moment, making both audiences and characters think of what to do now.
Innovations in equipment was what allowed Nouvelle Vague filmmakers to experiment with long-takes, due to lighter cameras, as well as experiment with other stylistic conventions (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 404). During the late 1950s and early 1960s, lighter cameras were created that did not need tripods, and reflex viewfinders came along as well as film stock that produced better exposure in lower light (Marie 2009: 78). Although this equipment was designed for documentary filmmakers, fiction directors immediately took advantage of it, being able to film scenes in the streets with lighter cameras, such as in Cléo, quicker and cheaper (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 404).
Another prevalent stylistic feature of the Nouvelle Vague is the discontinuous editing (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 404). Not seen since the silent era, young directors started to experiment with the power of fragmentary, discontinuous editing. ‘Older directors preferred smooth continuous editing and considered Soviet montage unrealistic and manipulative’ (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 404). In À Bout de Souffle, Godard cut bits of the film out from the middle of a sequence, creating jump cuts, disorientating viewers. Although Cléo does have a few very subtle ‘jump cuts’, these were most probably done without any profound purpose and simply incorporated due to the need to fix the edit. However Varda’s film makes use of the technique of fragmentary, discontinuous editing. After Cléo finds out she most probably has cancer in the first scene, she walks down the stairs. However as she is walking down we see a close up of her face moving into the camera, repeated 4 times. This editing technique symbolizes Cléo’s reluctance to accept her nearby death, thus through the repetition of the same shot, Varda makes Cléo want to extent her life, to repeat it, and have more time, before she dies (Orpen 2007: 25).
Cléo de 5 à 7 released in 1962, directed by Agnès Varda, is an incredibly inspirational and innovative Nouvelle Vague picture due to its use of original stylistic and narrative features and it, along with the entire Nouvelle Vague cinema, proved to be a major contributor to postwar cinematic modernism (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 412). The Nouvelle Vague’s most distinctive narrative techniques, as seen in Cléo, were multiple presentations of events, reflexivity, open-ended narratives and plots surrounding leisure-class lifestyles. Furthermore, innovations in equipment led to stylistic creativity such as the use of long takes in Cléo and directors also started experimenting with discontinuous editing and montage, replacing the dense staging that had been common after World War II, and inspiring the future of cinema, such as the American New Wave (Thompson and Bordwell 2010: 412).
Bibliography
Graham, P. and Vincendeau, G. (2009). The French New Wave. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Marie, M. (2009). La Nouvelle Vague. [Paris]: A. Colin.
Orpen, V. (2007). Cléo de 5 à 7. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Ostrowska, D. (2008). Reading the French New Wave. London: Wallflower Press.
Powrie, P. (2006). The Cinema of France. London: Wallflower Press.
Smith, A. (1998). Agnès Varda. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Temple, M. and Witt, M. (2004). The French Cinema Book. London: BFI.
Thompson, K. and Bordwell, D. (2010). Film History. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Marie, M. (2009). La Nouvelle Vague. [Paris]: A. Colin.
Orpen, V. (2007). Cléo de 5 à 7. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Ostrowska, D. (2008). Reading the French New Wave. London: Wallflower Press.
Powrie, P. (2006). The Cinema of France. London: Wallflower Press.
Smith, A. (1998). Agnès Varda. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Temple, M. and Witt, M. (2004). The French Cinema Book. London: BFI.
Thompson, K. and Bordwell, D. (2010). Film History. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Filmography
À Bout de Souffle (1960) Directed by Jean-Luc Godard [Film]. France: Les Films Impéria.
City Lights (1931) Directed by Charlie Chaplin [Film]. USA: Charles Chaplin Productions.
Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962) Directed by Agnès Varda [Film]. France: Ciné Tamaris.
Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959) Directed by Alain Resnais [Film]. France: Argos Films.
L'Année Dernière à Marienbad (1961) Directed by Alain Resnais [Film]. France: Cocinor.
La Peau Douce (1964) Directed by François Truffaut [Film]. France: Les Films du Carrosse.
Le Mépris (1963) Directed by Jean-Luc Godard [Film]. France: Les Films Concordia.
Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959) Directed by François Truffaut [Film]. France: Les Films du Carrosse.
Pierrot Le Fou (1965) Directed by Jean-Luc Godard [Film]. France: Films Georges de Beauregard.
Solaris (1972) Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky [Film]. Soviet Union: Mosfilm
Trans-Europ-Express (1966) Directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet [Film]. France: Como Films.
Un Chien Andalou (1929) Directed by Luis Buñuel [Film]. France: Billancourt Studios.
City Lights (1931) Directed by Charlie Chaplin [Film]. USA: Charles Chaplin Productions.
Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962) Directed by Agnès Varda [Film]. France: Ciné Tamaris.
Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959) Directed by Alain Resnais [Film]. France: Argos Films.
L'Année Dernière à Marienbad (1961) Directed by Alain Resnais [Film]. France: Cocinor.
La Peau Douce (1964) Directed by François Truffaut [Film]. France: Les Films du Carrosse.
Le Mépris (1963) Directed by Jean-Luc Godard [Film]. France: Les Films Concordia.
Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959) Directed by François Truffaut [Film]. France: Les Films du Carrosse.
Pierrot Le Fou (1965) Directed by Jean-Luc Godard [Film]. France: Films Georges de Beauregard.
Solaris (1972) Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky [Film]. Soviet Union: Mosfilm
Trans-Europ-Express (1966) Directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet [Film]. France: Como Films.
Un Chien Andalou (1929) Directed by Luis Buñuel [Film]. France: Billancourt Studios.