Agnes Varda Film Analysis

Evaluating Agnès Varda as an Auteur Filmmaker The French New Wave, a sensational shift that marked the history of cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s, has engendered an array of film theories as well as criticism. Despite its ambiguity as a coherent movement, the New Wave films “share connections, a common essence which is nothing less than their notion of mise-en-scène, or a filmic écriture, based on share principles…One recognizes a nouvelle vague film by its style.” In a nutshell, the New Wave films are characterized by: an improvisational approach to the script and acting, nonprofessional actors, location-shooting with rudimentary lighting and direct sounds, the illustration of everyday life of ordinary characters, and an auteur

As an unseen interviewer, Varda narrates the interviews of the people who last encountered Mona, addressing the audience through voice-over and self-consciously building up the life and identity of Mona. Like other films, Mona wanders about the real locales of rural countryside in France, begging and hitching rides; the interviewees also seem to be unprofessional cast. Mona and Cléo, the two iconoclastic female protagonists of Varda, share several factors in common: Mona is depicted as an unlikeable protagonist, rude, filthy and abrasive. She abuses the trust and kindness of others to fend for herself, abandoning her boyfriend when he is in danger and stealing from a generous family. Both characters’ movement are tracked in long shots, but unlike Cléo who is mostly placed in the center of the frame, Mona walks in and out of the frame already in motion, appearing and then falling behind in the periphery. This reveals the differing status of the two characters, one as a glamorous pop singer in Paris and the other as an ill-fated drifter in the countryside. Lastly, Cléo and Mona disengage from the traditional female identity as a fetishized object for men. Mona gives up her job as a secretary, which denotes submissiveness and obedience, and she also openly expresses her sexual desires as an independent being. However, whereas the fear of death allows Cléo to break away from her masquerade and to discover her true identity, Mona undergoes a series of hardships after leaving her career that eventually trigger her tragic death, symbolizing how a woman is penalized for not adhering to social conventions. In particular, the settings featuring Mona’s corpose lying in vineyard ditch metaphorically illustrates the human body returning to earth, Varda’s means of reconciling death with the naturalness of human life