Born out of a true love of film and a yearning to put ideas onto the screen, the blooming of the French new wave during the late fifties and spanning the sixties, gave birth to an overly experimental aura within the industry and brewed films that would go on to shape worldwide cinema forever. Filmmakers such as Godard, Truffaut and Melville made such dynamic and groundbreaking features that the entire artistic community took notice. The figurative girl to break into this “boy’s club” was Agnes Varda, with her film “Cleo from 5 to 7”. A simple enough story of a Parisian singer awaiting test results in regards to her possible cancerous stomach tumour, is at once simple and yet throughout the film is simultaneously punctuated by comments on gender, vanity, disease and other social issues. To answer the question however it is clear that “Cleo from 5 to 7” is most definitely an example of the French new wave film movement, to exemplify this more clearly is to look directly at how Varda’s film correlates with the singular tropes of the films of the movement.

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One of the key matters of the French new wave and one of the primary goals of the members of the film Journal Cashiers du cinema (Godard, Truffaut), is the matter of Auteur theory (a creation of their own) or as they referenced it la politique des auteurs. In its simplest form the Auteur theory was that a film is the vision and ultimate product of the filmmaker, who would often take the role of writer and director, despite the collaborative nature of the other facets of the crew, the film would always ultimately come down to the vision of the filmmaker. Agnes Varda fits this profile very clearly, not only is she the writer and director of the film, but her female voice is heard very clearly throughout the film and sets the film aside from the more male centric films popular in the period. Each of Varda’s choices has weight in the new wave, they are often experimental and on a first watch might seem completely arbitrary or there for the “sake of it”, however it is with these choices that Varda knowingly and hopefully instigates a conversation amongst the audience – this is the key to all of the French new wave, creating an essay film to spur analytical conversation as an audience would a book or other forms of art. A singular example of one of Varda’s such choices is the systematic switching between colour and monochrome black and white as we switch between the points of views of Cleo and the fortune teller she is talking to, this decision places us immediately within through the lens of Cleo within the film and perfectly summates Cleo’s outlook on life (that being one of little joy since her fears have awoken).

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Another key feature is the application of the filmmaker’s minimal crew and micro to non-existent budgets, this often led to improvisational aspects and a general air of creativity amongst them. Aspects of these budget restraints play into the natural decor and locations of the “Cleo”, another key feature of the French new wave brought about inadvertently through the lack of budget these filmmakers had at their disposal. The minimal crew and budget also led to a documentary style of filming which is overly present throughout the film, especially during the scenes in which we follow Cleo through the Parisian streets as she searches for “something” that she herself doesn’t know what she is looking for. Such mistakes include the arm of a cameraman appearing in a mirror during the hat shopping scene (mirrors are a key motif in the film, linking to Cleo’s vanity) or the dolly track used in the final shot which is visible as the actor’s walk away. Despite this theoretical view in hindsight, Varda recalled in the documentary “anecdotes and memories” how devastated she was to see the track and convinced the producers to allow a re-shoot at great expense. However none of the retakes matched emotional quality of the initial filming and hence the track remains.

Amongst the films other choices are the narrative choices made by Varda to tell her story, the film is told through a series of tableaus as Cleo reaches her appointment time, these vary from shopping with her assistant, gallivanting among the French streets (a major trope) with her live model friend (a key figure for the film’s feminist agenda) to a scene which combines hilarity and melodrama and pure hurt as Cleo meets with her song writer Bob; played by Michael Legrand, the film’s composer and a composer of many other French new wave films including the uncompromisingly brilliant Jacques Demy musical “The umbrella’s of Cherbourg”. These tableaus however often don’t match the chapter intertitles that also break the film up narrative. In the middle of the film during her gallivanting, Cleo and the audience watch a brief short film directed and starring French new wave Auteur Jean Luc Godard, this brief short mixes slapstick humour with a blend of vague racism (which is not very clear in its goal, whether it be satirical or misguided). Another key choice by Varda which plays majorly into the essay film aspect of the movie, is that the film despite its title only shows us Cleo’s day from 5:00 to 6:30 (unless her tram ride was abnormally long), this leads us to question what was so key in that final half hour that it deserved to be within the title. The film abides another trope by casting non professional actors and professional actors still deemed as new faces, this was Varda’s second film and she still was yet to develop a company of actors much like Godard or Truffaut. However Varda does break a common French new wave trope in that she subverts the use of direct sound (recording the sound with the camera live) and employs voiceover narration for multiple characters which varies in its length and significance often and plays music over several takes, definitely added within post production. Varda also choose within her sound design and cinematography to have the audience listen to a complete radio news report from the time.

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Due to the love of the French new wave by such filmic figures as Warren Beatty and Arthur Penn, films inspired by the movement began to appear, Beatty and Penn’s contribution being the film “Mickey one”, a film that evidently misses the point that so many of the filmmakers of the movement were trying to make. However this effect of the French new wave can still be felt vividly in today’s cinema, amongst the many modern day auteurs still making films the prescience is omnipresent, primarily within the films of such directors as Scorsese, Tarantino and Soderbergh. Through the breaking down of clichés, film language and general audience expectations, the French new wave broke explicit new ground in the film scene. This can be evidently seen within Varda’s film; Varda refuses to give us either a happy ending or a sad ending, the film lies somewhere in the ether, intentionally undercutting the emotional and near traumatic beauty of Cleo’s rendition of “Without you” with Bob by having the ending be so non-cathartic. Varda doesn’t allow us that release, in any capacity. Varda wants’ us to discuss, wants’ us to think. Varda had made an essay film. Varda has made a perfect example of the French new wave.

-          - Thomas Carruthers