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I. Cleo in context
Agnes Varda directed her first feature film, Cleo de 5 a 7, in 1961.1 According to Susan Hayward, "Varda is known as the 'Mother' (even 'grandmother') of the Nouvelle Vague" (30). Her short La Pointe-Courte ( 1954) is often cited as a precursor of the movement and has been called by some the first New Wave film.2 In addition to her pioneering role, Varda is credited for having created one of the principal "mature films" of the French New Wave.3 Like many of the films directed in France in the 1950s and 1960s, Cleo is characterized by traveling shots, jump-cuts, and the disjunction of sound and image. Varda's heroine, Cleo Victoire, is in perpetual motion as she traverses the city of Paris on foot and in taxi cabs, cars, and an open-air bus. The film contains scenes shot in noisy, bustling cafes. One can discern fragments of conversations about love, art, and the Algerian War. Writing (signs, posters, and billboards), a hallmark of the New Wave, appears in numerous scenes and complements the diegesis. Varda's film is likewise replete with references to mythology, the plastic arts, and the cinema of Vigo, Renoir, and Godard.
Like all avant-garde movements, the New Wave created somewhat of a scandal and shocked the contemporary spectator by unveiling the nature of cinematic illusion and its processes. In addition to overthrowing conventional cinematic techniques, a number of New Wave cinematographers challenged the patriarchy by weaving social critique into their films. As one of the few women associated with this movement, Agnes Varda used her camera to explore representations of gender and the notion of gender as a social construct. Since film production is at once an individual's vision and part of a social process, Vardaa young and relatively unknown filmmaker-was only able to raise these questions by making certain concessions: "And if I could make Cleo about femininity and fear of death" she says, "it is because the girl was beautiful. If you told the same story about a SS-year-old lonely woman, who would care if she were dying of cancer and who would come to see the film" ("Mother" 64). Varda's comments reveal that her representation of Cleo stems in part from the artistic and cultural...