Les Glaneurs et La Glaneuse by Agnès Varda

[Smeraldina Rima]

I watched Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (The Gleaners and I), a documentary about gleaners and other collecters ranging from Millet's famous painting to people who collect not only grain but fruit and vegetables, bread from bakery bins and other kinds of picking up of things people have thrown away. All the way through Varda films herself, especially her old hands, and little things she likes the look of like the potatoes shaped like hearts. She collects these and then films them again when they have gone bad.

It made me think a lot of myself and the other people at the supermarket reduced sections in different cities and towns. She captures all the familiar touching gestures and the main two of leaning down to gather items and carrying a heavy bag. You notice the same natural shape in everyone leaning down for vegetables at the market or whatever it is. Everyone talking to her has their own story, some bargain hunters, some obsessives, some with ethical attitudes about the waste of modern society, some liars maybe.

There are a few funny moments including an artist who collects scrap and dolls and fuses them into strange sculptures with the doll faces decaying in the surrounding rubbish-art. A vitamin conscious and vegetarian scavenger collects discarded greenery from the market in the mornings before selling street magazines and at night teaching French to international students, where one of the students correctly suggests 'Celine Dion' to illustrate 'le succès'. Working and broken fridges are everywhere in the street and one fridge in a collection says on the outside: Open the door. What are the playmobile doing? Then inside the fridge the figures are protesting for freedom.

French raps about the whole thing, actually about the subjects of the film, come along in bursts and there's a pretty group folk song from the fruit pickers half way through. These are the urban and the rural music that go with the film's actions I suppose. We learn some things about the laws around the different kinds of collection in France, how much people can take away personally of oysters or fruit, by law and custom, and how much more they can get away with.

I wasn't paying attention in one bit but I think it had a professional apple picker, deciding which apples to throw to the ground for the amateurs to enjoy. He described the apple as like a person not beautiful or intelligent, no commercial value for anyone.

Is anyone a fan of Varda's documentaries or other films? The only one I've seen before is Cleo from 5 to 7.

[Lost Oliver]

Saw this a couple of years ago and loved it! Really interesting stuff and very French. Not sure which folk song you're referring to but I do remember the little chant that the children gave, something like:

lundi pomme de terre, mardi pomme de terre, mercredi pomme de terre, jeudi pomme de terre, vendredi pomme de terre, samedi pomme de terre et dimanche gratin de pomme de terre!

The man who was teaching French and scavenging his life was pretty much the perfect person and someone we should all be following. Really pleased he got a bit of exposure.

What other films of hers are worth a go? Only seen this.

[Smeraldina Rima]

Haha, I forgot that song. It goes:

Lundi des patates!
Mardi des patates!
Mercredi des patates aussi!
Jeudi des patates!
Vendredi des patates!
Samedi des patates aussi!
...
Dimanche, gratin de pommes de terre.

The song I was thinking of is sung by the family picking grapes before Varda films the dancing secateurs and raw experience after forgetting to turn off her camera. Can't help very much with recommendations as I've only seen this documentary and Cleo 5 to 7, which is good, a classic of the new wave. There's a sequel to the gleaners film too.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

I've got to cop to the fact that I've not seen Les Glaneurs et La Glaneuse even though I have it on DVD and look forward to doing so. I'm the sort that tends to buy up everything I can find of a certain director's work and works through it all in chronological order over time. This means that I've only seen her earlier works (which are all brilliant so far), and I thought I could share some thoughts about the films of hers that I've seen here for anyone curious about her other work.

Her first film La Pointe Courte, made in 1955, is a sort of half-documentary half-fiction film that is sometimes referred to as the 'first New Wave film' because of the bold photography (there's a shot in there that directly anticipates Bergman's famous 'face-merging' shot in Persona) and striking use of a real location for the setting. It's both a documentary on the day-to-day habits of the inhabitants of a small fisherman's village in the south of France and a mildly ponderous drama about the imminent disintegration of a romantic relationship. It's amateurish for sure, but interesting and exploratory in exactly the right ways and a testament to how Varda was always a great photographer. Features Phillipe Noiret in a pre-stardom dramatic role.

Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962) has previously been mentioned and is obviously Varda's most famous film, alongside The Gleaners and I. An unashamedly existential film, it focuses on a self-centered pop singer whose way of life is thrown into question by the revelation of some bad news. Unusually for Varda, the film takes place in Paris which may have been a contributing factor the film's success and responsible for the film being associated so strongly with the New Wave. Varda is usually drawn to the more rural or coastal regions of France, but this preference for quieter settings means that she offers a uncommon perspective by depicting the modern metropolitan hustle and bustle of Paris as being somewhat of a contributing factor to her protagonist's psychological turmoil. Despite the deliberately less than sympathetic main character and grim premise, the film still finds time for fun with the inclusion of a song and a lovely mock silent film interlude.

Le Bonheur (1965) is a love story set in a rural village filmed in brilliant, painterly colour and is one of those films where the less you know going in, the better. Features an ending that'll leave you in a daze. On the documentary accompanying the film on the DVD, the actors clearly aren't in agreement about what the ending implies which only makes it all the more interesting. A cryptic clue is in the title.

She contributed to the documentary Loin du Vietnam (1967), which is an interesting time capsule and also features an amazing line-up of collaborating directors; Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude LeLouch, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais and Varda herself. I'm not entirely sure what Varda did on the film as the film isn't really split into clear segments that make it clear who's directing what. But it features incredible footage of protests on the streets of New York and in general paints a broader and more probing picture of the various ideological concerns about the conflict than any of the later Hollywood takes on the war did. It's a fascinatingly dense and textured film too, and often feels like thrillingly intelligent cinema. (However, it also features a baffling contribution from Godard, who does get a segment to himself, but it's just a monologue about how he feels that he has nothing to contribute as he's never been to Vietnam and therefore doesn't truly understand the issue. And yet, he takes up 10 mins of the film to inform us of this).

Varda splits off from the French film industry for a bit to make some films in Los Angeles, having moved there to accompany her husband Jacques Demy who had a deal to make a Hollywood film (which would become 'Model Shop'). The first of her American films is the documentary, Uncle Yanco (1967) which is a wonderfully playful and charming account of her tracking down a long-lost relative, an eccentric uncle who lives as a painter on a houseboat whose bohemian ways have endeared him to an emerging generation of young people. It is a truly vibrant, happy and affectionate film with further evidence of Varda's exceptional eye for colour. Another documentary from this time is Black Panthers (1968) which examines the movement at a critical time and has priceless footage of a Black Panther congregation at the height of their influence. All the more famous names appear on camera, including Bobby Seale, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver and even an interview with the recently incarcerated Huey Newton in a prison visiting room. Watching it made me realise how a shocking amount of the issues pertaining to race relations the Panthers were concerned about then are still prevalent in America today. Varda later said that making that particular documentary was a political awakening for her, and her increased awareness of political activism led to her later films being more explicitly feminist in their perspective.

Her first English language feature is a film called Lions Love (...and Lies) (1969) which is another work that blurs the boundaries between documentary and fiction and mainly depicts Viva (one of Warhol's superstars), Gerome Ragni and James Rado (the creators of the musical 'Hair') swanning around a beautiful house in the Hollywood hills with gorgeous sunlight washing over everything at all times. It's a very experimental piece, very much of it's time, with lots of fourth wall breaking, improvised dialogue and structural distension but it manages to be a captivating outsider's portrait of Los Angeles, stardom, the myth of Hollywood, young people and the process of making cinema. A very unique, mould-breaking film.

Anyway, if you want to read some good writing about Varda's work then the Museum of the Moving Image's site Reverse Shot are in the process of publishing a series of articles on every one of her films. Archive here: http://reverseshot.org/symposiums/37/cinevardautopia

[Herbert Ashe]

Cleo is the only one of those ^ I've seen; I'll add that Les Creatures from that period had a terrible reception, I didn't care for it when I saw it but this was a crappy TV rip before it'd made it to DVD, it's not a straightforward film so it probably deserves a better presentation to judge.

The Gleaners sequel is a must see as well, as follow-up & reflection on the first, but most of all The Beaches of Agnes (2008) where she looks back & summarises her career. I tend to prefer her films in which she features most of all, as she's such a funny & engaging presence. See also Daguerréotypes (1976) - interviews with 70s Parisian shopkeepers - which is one of those documentaries that with time has taken on a double viewpoint and become richer, now it's a 40 year old snapshot of time itself.

Also along the lines of Beaches is Jane B. par Agnès V. (1988) which as long as you aren't allergic to Jane Birkin has plenty of amusing skits and ruminations on acting & directing & all that. It also led to Kung Fu Master! - Birkin having a thing with an underage boy, given interest via the AIDS undercurrent and the presence of her children (& Varda's & Demy's son) in the cast. I'd guess Vagabond (1985) is, along with Cleo, has the status of her consensus best film. Can't really go wrong with it.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Here's something fun I found! Agnès Varda's most recent film from just last year, officially available on YouTube. A short film called 'Les 3 Boutons': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mkuSTzf_Pw

[Herbert Ashe]

Caught up on a couple of the films mentioned above.

Felt La Pointe Courte a bit too tentative to be a major film; curious how it has elements that make it seem as a bit of a precursor to films of both the Cahiers group and the Left Bankers (or maybe I just have an incomplete view of the period). This is one thing that undermines Les Creatures on a rewatch: the slight seediness of a small coastal resort town is quite of a piece with early 60s Godard, before an unconvincing and slightly abortive science fiction (& half-heartedly meta-fictional) plot.

Reckon Le Bonheur might be her best fiction film. No spoiler to reveal (as it's in the credits) that the family was a real-life family, and even more-so than with Kung Fu Master this only improves things. And yes, those colours! Must see.