Daguerreotypes

Daguerréotypes (1976) was written and directed by Agnès Varda.

The movie gives us portraits of the people that occupy the small shops of the Rue Daguerre, in Paris, where the filmmaker lived. Rue Daguerre is in the 14th arrondissement. It is, indeed, named in honor of Louis Daguerre, the inventor of one of the earliest photographic techniques. Photographs made using this process are called daguerreotypes, so Varda's title has a double meaning. Her film is a photographic image of the street on which she lived, which was named after someone who made photographic images possible.

Although I think Rue Daguerre is more touristic now, in 1976 it was a residential street filled with small shops. Some of the shops were basic--a bakery, a butcher shop. But some were more specialized, like a perfumery. The shops are run by middle-aged couples--the classic French bourgeoisie.

Varda brings us into these shops, where the people know her and where they apparently talk very freely with her. To an outsider, they're just people who run a shop. To Varda, they are all people with an interesting story to tell. They tell her their stories, and she shares them with us.

This is movie in which not much happens, and there really isn't any plot. The film is a documentary about a time, a place, and the people who lived at that time in that place. Varda is a talented filmmaker who saved that time, that place, and those people for us to see. Her talent shines through, even 40 years later.

We saw Daguerréotypes at the excellent Dryden Theatre in the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. It was part of an Agnès Varda retrospective, sponsored by Rochester Institute of Technology and the Eastman Museum. It will work very well on a small screen.

Agnes Varda presents a loving view at the shop-owners of her street with much care for their everyday lives, their biographies and a keen eye for detail.

Very affectionate portraits of Agnes neighbours - mostly shopkeepers, at work and at play.

For me, the extended sequence where they attend a performance of the local magician (and all-round entertainer) is the highlight, but there's lots else to savour here.

The first thing I appreciate here is that Varda went out with a camera and filmed her own neighborhood, looked for insight right outside her door. How richer would our lives be (and looking back, the cachet of images that convey the past) if more filmmakers were alert to their surroundings, looked for insight in the present?

She finds an ordinary life of course; visits middle-aged bakers, butchers, perfume sellers in their shops, observes the coming and going. There are no young people interviewed, so this emerges as the chronicle of a generation, Varda's own; the generation who were kids or teenagers during WWII and came to the big city right after from some village in the countryside. The street is Rue Dageurre, after the pioneer of early photography. It's photographs of life that we get. Our reward is that ordinary insight of photographs.

The best photographs are spontaneous, offering a sense that lingers. The sense here is bittersweetness that the journey has come to a stop there in that street, that this is a last station. They recount stories of how they fell in love with a fondness as if stirring the young lover they were. Asked about dreams they see, most dream that they're back in the shops they run during the day, a few dream about romance. The saddest of these neighbors is the old wife of the perfume seller who absently sits around the shop all day, not fully there in mind. The most poignant thing, in the evenings she's seized by some inexplicable urge to go out the door as if something calls for her, some journey left incomplete. She never ventures past the door.

This sense so placidly evoked lingered with me all day and the next; how we're caught between a life we build as loving shelter and the urge to step out the door in the evenings. The soul calls for both, both require mindful cultivation; going out in search of aimless pleasure must be only the unmindful way to do it, the artless way. Varda it seems strove to make herself a gift of that life that is mindfully present, cultivate it; a film like this is the seed that invites the care required to bloom.

The film is a small gesture of affectionate presence, closeness. Sad, and not. Its place may not be in a list of lifechanging works. But it can deepen you the same way a small gesture like stroking a loved one's hair deepens love.

(Ideally you'll see this after Varda's Le Bonheur, one of the most masterful films I know. The couple there could be among the ones here, grown to be 50 together in the same home; consider this an addendum. The same question emerges. Is this happiness? What is this mind that wonders?)

Agnés Varda's best documentary is something as simple as a portrait of various shopkeepers and their families on a street (Rue Daguerre) in Paris. The reason for choosing the location was because during this period in her career Varda lived on this street and also had a 2 year old son who she could not be away from. All filming took place within a 90 meter radius of her home. This limitation becomes a huge asset to the documentary and makes it feel very intimate and emotional.

The French director Agnés Varda was a master at finding beauty in the everyday and giving a voice to ordinary people. This is a theme that generally recurs in her artistry and in several of her documentaries, for example Faces Places and The Gleaners and I. In Daguerréotypes we get to meet both bakers, spice merchants and tailors and their respective. They all have more or less interesting life stories to tell. Common to the dialogues is that they get to answer questions about from/why and when they came to Paris as well as what their dreams are. The documentary is also packed with minor events that happened on the street during the time the recording took place. For example, a magician "Mystag" performs for guests in a small cafe. All this makes the street feel even more alive to us outsiders.

In the end, the documentary gives us as spectators a nostalgic/poetic kick both in terms of environments and life. The whole thing is presented in a particularly beautiful/moving way and thus becomes an enjoyable time document from a bygone era. If I ever go to Paris, I will definitely visit the Rue Daguerre, but before that I will continue to visit the Rue Daguerre of the time in Daguerréotypes.