{"id":141,"date":"2011-12-03T15:11:33","date_gmt":"2011-12-03T15:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/?page_id=141"},"modified":"2011-12-04T03:52:41","modified_gmt":"2011-12-04T03:52:41","slug":"varda-daguerreotype-1975-and-women-respond-1975","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/?page_id=141","title":{"rendered":"Varda, Daguerr\u00e9otypes (1975), and Women Respond (1975)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Agn\u00e8s Varda, Daguerr\u00e9otypes <\/em>(1975), and R\u00e9sponses de femmes<\/em> (1975)<\/strong><\/p>\n

We are about to look at two films by Agnes Varda<\/a>\u2014the documentary feature Daguerr\u00e9otypes<\/em> and the short agit film R\u00e9sponses de femmes<\/em> (<\/strong>Women Respond<\/em>).\u00a0 These two films from 1974-75 were made after a four-year hiatus in Varda’s career during which she gave birth to her son, Mathieu Demy in October 1972.\u00a0 In 1973 German TV offered Varda carte blanche<\/em> to make a film and Daguerr\u00e9otypes<\/em> was the result.<\/p>\n

Varda has lived on Rue Daguerre since 1951.\u00a0 She was born in 1928, so Mathieu was born when she was in her mid-1940s\u2013\u2013a high risk pregnancy, particularly in the 1970s.\u00a0\u00a0 Her choice of subject matter enabled her to stay close to home and her new child\u2013\u2013subject matter that had a domestic even maternal component\u00a0 (in a voiceover she says that the people she filmed were no more than 50 meters from her front door).\u00a0 As she tells us in her documentary made 20 years later, L’univers de Jacques Demy<\/em> (1995), she and her husband, director Jacques Demy, were close partners even though they did not collaborate together as filmmakers.\u00a0 They lived on Rue Daguerre and were artisans and even shopkeepers like those in the film (their cutting room was also on Rue Daguerre).\u00a0 One is struck by the fact that so many of the shops are also run by husband\/wife teams and in some cases their lives seem to echo those of Varda\/Demy.\u00a0 The tailors, who make clothes to order, are shown cutting cloth just as Varda\/Demy cut their films.\u00a0 Then there are the hairstylists who have adjoining shops, which share a door to the street: the husband cutting the men\u2019s hair while the wife cutting the woman\u2019s is an evocative parallel. Perhaps like the filmmakers they alternately wait somewhat bored and impatiently for customers and then engage in flurries of intense work.<\/p>\n

This film, as one might expect, is very knowing and self-reflexive.\u00a0 It is somewhat of a clich\u00e9 to point out that the shop windows have as their counterparts the camera frame and the cinema screen.\u00a0 Those on the streets look in the windows and see the film\u2019s subjects.\u00a0 But Varda goes a step further and uses her camera to provide us with windows onto their worlds: we learn where they were born, how the couples met, and when the arrived on Rue Daguerre.\u00a0 We learn their dreams.\u00a0 Likewise, it is important to know that Varda was a photographer as well as a filmmaker.\u00a0 She probably did not end up on Rue Daguerre by chance: what better place for a photographer to set up shop than on a street named after the inventor of the first commercially successful photographic process: Louis-Jacques-Mand\u00e9 Daguerre <\/a>(18 November 1787 \u2013 10 July 1851).\u00a0 \u00a0The film\u2019s name is also a play on the daguerr\u00e9otype<\/a> name.\u00a0 As Varda makes explicit in a voiceover late in the film, her subjects are types\u2014typical Parisian petit bourgeoisie; but her documentary also provides us with photographic portraits or daguerr\u00e9otypes.\u00a0 And while the documentary is a motion<\/em> picture, at various points Varda\u2019s subjects pose for her camera as if it was a mid-19th<\/sup> century photographic camera as they assume formal, static pose for several seconds at various points in the film.<\/p>\n

The film itself can be further appreciated if situated within the framework of certain simple theoretical and historical understandings about cinema which were widespread at the time\u2014ideas promulgated by Andr\u00e9 Bazin and Georges Sadoul among others.\u00a0 Per Bazin, cinema had its basis in photography\u2014its links to Daguerre were thus strong and direct.\u00a0 Secondly, the film alternates between what was often considered the two fundamental tendencies in cinematic practice: the \u201cLumi\u00e8re way\u201d\u2013\u2013with its shots of local people, places and family (thus the appearance of Varda\u2019s daughter Rosalie Demy at the beginning of the film is crucial), and the \u201cM\u00e9li\u00e8s way\u201d as evidenced by the appearance of the magician Mystag at different points in the film.\u00a0 Potential deceptive in its simplicity, Daguerr\u00e9otype<\/em>s is a rich and rewarding film that merits sustained analysis.<\/p>\n

This might be the place to mention the ways in which Daguerr\u00e9otypes<\/em> resonate with the theme that unifies this weekend\u2019s films\u2014\u201cRemnants of Utopia.\u201d The film makes visible, even as it constructs, a community of people who live and work on Rue Daguerre.\u00a0 First, as Varda shows, the people who own one shop are also the customers of other shopkeepers in the films\u2013\u2013again not unlike Varda herself.\u00a0 Second, she actively constructs this community, intensifying its interactions by bringing them together to watch the\u00a0 magician. (They did not appear there by chance: this was the staged\/M\u00e9li\u00e8s-like portions of the film in more ways than one).\u00a0 The film is a celebration of community in its utopic dimensions.\u00a0 Although the documentary possesses an elegiac quality, as some have pointed out; the community has the capacity for renewal though in a somewhat different form.\u00a0 The newest shop owner, who runs a grocery, is from Africa and he is key to the renewal process.\u00a0 In this respect Varda\u2019s afterpiece, Daguerr\u00e9otype 2005 <\/em>(2005), reveals that the person in the 1975 film who still works on Rue Daguerre had been a shop assistant the Algerian-run grocery, which he subsequently bought.\u00a0 The nature of community changes over time. Indeed one might say that a community best understands itself as a self-conscious community at the moment at which it is about to disintegrate: certainly it is true that many of the shopkeepers in the 1975 film are nearer the end of their careers.\u00a0 Nonetheless, as Varda in 2005 points out, and a visit to rue Daguerre can confirm, there is\u2014in this case\u2013\u2013both continuity and renewal.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s exhibition history is not clearly documented in the literature.\u00a0 It was broadcast by ZDF, the German television channel that funded the film, on June 24, 1975.\u00a0 It apparently played at the Cannes Film Festival in the previous month and won the Prix du Cin\u00e9ma d’Art et d’Essai 1975.\u00a0 I saw it there, (or possibly when it played at the Women\u2019s Film Festival in New York City in September 1976).\u00a0 Shot in super-16mm and blown up to 35mm at some point, it likely had a run in Parisian theaters.\u00a0 In any case, Daguerr\u00e9otypes<\/em> was broadcast on French TV, TF1, on November 29, 1976.\u00a0 I confess that Daguerr\u00e9otypes<\/em> has stuck in my mind all these years as an impressive achievement, which is not an opinion that I have necessarily shared with others.\u00a0 The one book on Varda in English, Alison Smith\u2019s Agn\u00e8s Varda<\/em> (St. Martin’s Press, 1998), only mentions it in passing. Dudley Andrew also had his reservations, considering it a minor work\u2014though perhaps this screening will change his mind.\u00a0 From today\u2019s vantage point, at least we can see the film as anticipating the later stages of Varda\u2019s remarkable career as elements of Daguerr\u00e9otypes<\/em> were to be recast in her remarkable documentary The Gleaners and I<\/em> (2000) \u2013made some 25 years later\u2014which I showed earlier this year in my class on World Documentary.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

La R\u00e9sponses de femmes<\/em> (<\/strong>Women Respond) was nominated as Best Short Film – Documentary (Meilleur court m\u00e9trage documentaire) for the C\u00e9sar\u00a0 –the French equivalent of the Oscars in 1977.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Agn\u00e8s Varda, Daguerr\u00e9otypes (1975), and R\u00e9sponses de femmes (1975) We are about to look at two films by Agnes Varda\u2014the documentary feature Daguerr\u00e9otypes and the short agit film R\u00e9sponses de femmes (Women Respond).\u00a0 These two films from 1974-75 were made after a four-year hiatus in Varda’s career during which she gave birth to her son, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/141"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/141\/revisions\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}