4 By Agnes Varda - Criterion Collection

Agnes Varda used the skills she honed early in her career as a photographer to create some of the most nuanced, thought-provoking films of the past fifty years. She is widely believed to have presaged the French new wave with her first film, La Pointe Courte, long before creating one of the movement´s benchmarks, Cleo From 5 To 7. Later, with Le Bonheur and Vagabond, Varda further shook up art-house audiences, challenging bourgeois codes with her inscrutable characters and effortlessly beautiful compositions and editing. Now working largely as a documentarian, Varda remains one of the essential cinematic poets of our time and a true visionary.

La Point Courte

The great Agnes Varda´s film career began with this graceful, penetrating study of a marriage on the rocks, set against the backdrop of a small Mediterranean fishing village. Both a stylized depiction of the complicated relationship between a married couple (Played by Silvia Monfront and Philippe Noiret) and a documentary like look at the daily struggles of the locals, Varda´s discursive, gorgeously filmed debut was radical enough to later be considered one of the progenitors of the coming French new wave

Cleo From 5 To 7

Anges Varda eloquently captures Paris in this sixties with this real time portait of a singer (Corinne Marchand) set adrift in the city as she awaits the results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman´s life, Cleo From 5 To 7 is a spirited mix of vivid verite and melodrama, featuring a score by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina

Le Bonheur

Though married to the good natured beautiful Therese (Claire Drouot), young husband and father Francois (Jean-Claude Drouot) finds himself falling unquestioningly into an affair with an attractive postal worker. One of Agnes Vardas most provocative films, Le Bonheur examines, with a deceptively cheery plaette and the spirited strains of Mozart, the terms of fidelity and happiness in a modern, self centered world.

Vagabond

Sandrine Bonnaire won the best actress Cesar for her portrayal of the defiant young drifter Mona, found frozen to death in a ditch at the beginning of Vagabond. Agnes Varda pieces together Mona´s story through flashbacks told by those who encountered her (played by a largely nonprofessional cast), producing a splintered portrait of an enigmatic women. With its sparse, poetic imagery, Vagabond is a stunner, and won Varda the top prize at the Venice Film Festival.