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Agnes Varda and the Art of Seeing Differently

Agnes Varda made films that feel intimate, curious and wonderfully alert to ordinary life. Across documentaries, fiction, photo essays and hybrid works, she found poetry in beaches, markets, gardens, train journeys, ageing bodies and chance encounters. Her cinema can be playful one moment and politically sharp the next, always shaped by a generous interest in how people live.

For Australian viewers, her work offers an especially rich alternative to fast-moving streaming culture. A Varda film rewards pausing over a face, a street corner or a small gesture, much as browsing a well-curated DVD shelf can reveal a film that an algorithm would never place in front of you. A physical copy also preserves the texture of the image and the surrounding context: essays, interviews, subtitles and archival extras that deepen the experience.

A Filmmaker Between Fiction and Reality

Varda began making films in the mid-1950s, before the French New Wave became a widely recognised movement. Her debut feature, La Pointe Courte (1955), follows a couple returning to a fishing village while the local community faces economic and social pressures. The film moves between carefully composed fiction and documentary observation, creating a form that feels both designed and discovered.

That balance remained central to her career. In Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), a pop singer wanders through Paris while waiting for the results of a medical test. The film unfolds almost in real time, yet its true subject is perception: how a person sees the city, strangers and herself when fear changes the meaning of every minute. Varda’s camera is alert to public life, but it also listens closely to private uncertainty.

Her work often resists the assumption that documentary must be neutral or invisible. Varda appears in her own films, shapes the editing openly and allows ideas to develop through association. This makes her cinema feel personal without becoming self-absorbed. She is less interested in pretending to stand outside the world than in showing how a filmmaker’s presence affects what can be seen.

The Streets, Faces and Rhythms of Paris

Paris in Varda’s films is not simply a picturesque backdrop. It is a living environment made from pavements, cafés, public transport, shopfronts and passing faces. In Cléo from 5 to 7, the city becomes a psychological map. A street performance, a taxi ride or a meeting with a friend can briefly interrupt the protagonist’s self-consciousness and return her to the wider world.

This attention to urban life also appears in The Gleaners and I (2000), where Varda travels through France meeting people who collect discarded food, objects and materials. The film connects traditional gleaning with contemporary poverty, environmental concern and creative reuse. Its handheld digital images have an openness that suits the subject: Varda follows whatever catches her eye, allowing a potato, a broken clock or a discarded photograph to become part of the argument.

Australian viewers may recognise the value of this street-level perspective in cities such as Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, where public space reveals tensions that polished cultural images conceal. Varda’s approach encourages us to notice suburban verges, weekend markets, community gardens and the people who work around the edges of consumer culture. The everyday becomes evidence.

Women, Work and Unfinished Identities

Varda’s films frequently examine the expectations placed on women, although she avoids reducing her characters to symbols. Le Bonheur (1965) presents a seemingly contented family life disrupted by an affair, using bright colours and a calm visual style to expose the unsettling ease with which social privilege can excuse male behaviour. The film’s beauty is deliberately uncomfortable.

One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977) follows two women whose friendship develops across years of political and personal change. Set against the French women’s movement, the story addresses reproductive rights, motherhood, marriage, music and independence. Varda gives the characters room to evolve rather than forcing them into a single model of liberation. Their lives remain complicated, shaped by work, love, parenthood and political conviction.

Her documentaries extend this interest in overlooked labour. Daguerréotypes (1976), filmed near Varda’s home on Paris’s Rue Daguerre, concentrates on local shopkeepers and tradespeople. The film understands work as a form of identity, routine and social connection. For audiences familiar with independent bookshops, record stores and neighbourhood cinemas in Australia, its portrait of small businesses has a recognisable warmth.

California, Community and the Politics of Place

Varda spent significant periods in the United States, particularly in California, where she made films that explored counterculture, feminism and the changing landscape. Lions Love (…and Lies) (1969) observes a group of performers living in Los Angeles during a period of political upheaval. The film blurs documentary and performance, capturing a culture in which revolutionary language, celebrity and commercial ambition constantly overlap.

Her American work also includes Mur Murs (1981), a vibrant documentary about Los Angeles murals. Varda treats the city’s painted walls as public storytelling, connecting neighbourhood histories with migration, activism and local pride. The murals are not merely decoration. They show who is allowed to speak in a city and how communities claim visibility when official narratives leave them out.

This sensitivity to place makes Varda valuable to viewers interested in Australian cultural life. Indigenous public art, community murals and local filmmaking projects can similarly transform streets into records of memory and resistance. Her films invite audiences to consider who controls an image, who is represented within it and what disappears when a neighbourhood is photographed only as a tourist attraction.

The Gleaners, the Cats and the Joy of Montage

Varda’s cinema is built from connections. A hand picking up a discarded object may lead to a meditation on ageing; a cat may reappear as a visual joke; a photograph may open a story about grief. Her editing is associative rather than strictly linear, allowing meaning to accumulate through echoes and contrasts.

Several recurring qualities make her films especially rewarding to revisit:

Her use of digital video in The Gleaners and I was particularly liberating. The small camera allowed her to work quickly, enter intimate spaces and record details that a large production might overlook. She embraced technical imperfection as a form of freedom. The image could be rough, unstable or unexpectedly beautiful, because the act of looking mattered more than polished control.

For a weekend viewing session in Australia, pairing The Gleaners and I with a documentary about local food waste, community gardens or recycling can create an engaging conversation across cultures. Varda’s concerns are French and personal, yet her questions about consumption, dignity and reuse travel easily.

Later Works and the Shape of a Life

Varda’s later films became increasingly autobiographical without losing their interest in other people. The Beaches of Agnès (2008) revisits places, relationships and artistic decisions through photographs, installations and staged memories. Rather than presenting a fixed memoir, Varda constructs a self-portrait from fragments. The result feels playful, candid and aware that memory is always being edited.

Her final major feature, Varda by Agnès (2019), gathers together her ideas about cinema and visual art. She describes her creative practice through the concepts of inspiration, creation and sharing. The film is valuable as a guide to her work, but it also reflects her belief that filmmaking is a form of conversation. A film is completed through its viewers, through discussion and through the new associations they bring to it.

Physical editions are especially meaningful for a filmmaker so concerned with archives, photographs and the survival of fragile images. A carefully selected DVD or Blu-ray can preserve restorations that deserve attention beyond their brief availability on a platform. Browsing the catalogue at Rain City Video offers a reminder that film culture can be built through recommendations, local knowledge and the pleasure of finding an unexpected title on a shelf.

Varda’s legacy also reaches beyond cinema. Her installations, photography and collaborations demonstrate how moving images can sit alongside objects, text and architecture. Those interested in visual storytelling, design or cultural research may find useful context through Owl Bureau, whose broader creative perspective reflects the kind of cross-disciplinary curiosity Varda valued.

Building a Varda Double Feature

A first encounter might begin with Cléo from 5 to 7, especially for viewers drawn to character-driven drama and city films. Follow it with The Gleaners and I to see how Varda moved from fictional subjectivity to documentary encounters without abandoning rhythm, humour or formal invention. The contrast reveals the range of her methods.

Another rewarding pairing is Vagabond (1985) and The Beaches of Agnès. Vagabond follows a young woman found dead after travelling through rural France, reconstructing her final weeks through interviews and fractured perspectives. It is harsher than many of Varda’s films, challenging the audience’s desire to explain or romanticise a person who refuses easy interpretation. The later self-portrait then shows how memory can be shaped with more tenderness, while still acknowledging loss and uncertainty.

A small viewing plan can help newcomers choose a starting point:

Australian availability can vary between cinemas, libraries, specialty distributors and streaming services, while imported discs may involve Region 2 DVD or Region B Blu-ray compatibility. Checking the edition before buying is worthwhile, particularly when a restoration includes new subtitles or archival extras. Local repertory programmes at venues such as ACMI in Melbourne or film societies in Sydney and Adelaide can also provide opportunities to see Varda’s work with an audience.

Her films are best approached as invitations rather than assignments. A viewer may begin with the Paris of Cléo, stay for the discarded treasures of The Gleaners and I, then discover that Varda’s real subject is attention itself: the decision to look longer, listen more carefully and find significance in lives that powerful images often pass over. Information about screenings, availability or the collection can be found through the store contact page.