La Pointe-Courte

La Pointe-Courte was the first feature written, edited (in part, with Resnais) and directed by Agnes Varda, but she came previously from still photography, and her clarity, empathy and specificity with a place and it's many details, from the rocks of the shore to how the water shimmers to the plethora of cats (and of course someone even comments on that), is evident right away. At time of writing this, I don't know the full backstory of how she came to become close and immerse herself with the people in this seaside town or village or whatever you call it, but they clearly are open to her and welcoming for her to see and show us all how they fish and talk among themselves and discuss matters important to them- such as outsiders coming in to tell them what to do. And sometimes we get to look close at a detail like how small snakes and crabs go into a bucket.

I don't think Varda would use this term, but like La Terra Trema or Stromboli, it's a depiction of a time and place, in crisp black and white 35mm film, that is authentic and unvarnished and a bit neo-realist-y. She also places a love story at the center which is coming apart at the seams, and in case it isn't clear the man and the woman walk and talk for minutes on end and speak on their hopelessness for their relationship (or more the woman than the man, he would like for it to work and she sees nothing productive ahead).

This is shot at points like a director figuring out what a style will be, and there are a few times shots are styled to be reflective of the characters abstract feelings, perhaps to each other. When the woman talks to her man, who will soon be her ex, she does that thing Bergman would do a decade later where her face is split down the middle by the man looking the other way (so like him one way her another but not at each other), and he does so too. Or with the two of them carrying on their conversation facing the camera in different places shot to shot. This latter part works well, in a poetic-detached sort of way. The other proto Bergman ones, maybe not so much.

Like watching Kubrick with Killer's Kiss or Fear and Desire, the fascination is getting a look at the Start of it all from a talent with a sharp, dramatically alive set of eyes, and in here where the sensibility of Varda was as someone who, in her case and in what I find very inspiring in the opposite way of like a Scorsese or his ilk, wasn't inspired or taking in homage from other films. From what I've read, she wasn't a Film Buff like the other Nouvelle Vague who would come up after and with her, and was just inspired more by what she was interested in: working class people who work hard and live hard and are noble, the delicacy in the poetry of movement, and cats. If this film is a little less than great or just compared to her other films it's that the strengths lie in the more documentary aspects. The (falling apart) love story is sincere but less convincing, maybe because the actors are mostly the same morose-detached tone for the entire time.

La Pointe-Courte is a very impressive debut, and for what it may be lacking in satisfying relationship scenes it more than makes up for with everything, all the local people and their minor joys and sadness and world weariness around the central characters. In other words, half of it is captivating because of the people Varda has found and made into movie stars, and the other half that is more like a "Film" is a bit more pretentious.

Agnès Varda began her career in 1954 as a feature film director with this movie that tells two separate stories in reciprocal counterpoint: daily life at a fishing village near Sète in France with its joys and dramatic moments and the relationship between husband and wife when she who is a Parisian returns to him after he had chosen to return to his birthplace where he feels now very happy but that doesn't seem to please her very much at first and puts their marriage in danger. This situation is given in a series of soft dialogues between them which don't reveal themselves deep and meaningful enough to make us feel the sentiments behind them. Varda has done much better later with such very good movies like "Le Bonheur" or "Cléo de 5 à 7". However this movie is also classified as a landmark in the New Wave of French cinema that began about that time with names like Truffaut, Godard and Chabrol. It's this historical value that mainly makes this movie worth to be seen.

La Pointe Courte (1955) was shown in the U.S. with its original French title. It was written and directed by Agnès Varda.

Although this was Varda's first film, she already had the uncanny knack of knowing how to film intensely personal moments, how to film small group discussions, and how to film crowd scenes. She wanted to write about the village of La Pointe Courte, but instead decided to make a movie. She borrowed money, and she made this movie. Clearly, she was a genius, and we can see that when we watch to film.

The acting in the film was at a high level. Most of the actors were nonprofessionals, who lived in the fishing village of La Pointe Courte.

However, the two leads: Philippe Noiret as Lui, and Silvia Monfort as Elle, were professional actors. (Although Noiret went on to become one of France's most popular actors, this was his first major role. Monfort was a professional who, by 1955, had already worked in theater and cinema.)

What makes the movie unique is that it blended one plot--an ethnographic vision of the small fishing village--with another very personal plot. In the latter plot, Noiret and Monfort play a married couple who have come from Paris to La Pointe Courte, where the husband was born. They are having an existential crisis. That always sounds pretentious, but I really think it fits in this case. Husband and wife are questioning their nature as individual human beings, their relationship as a couple, and whether they still truly love each other.

They rent a room in La Pointe Courte, and then they talk. (Remember, this is a French film--an early example of what became the French Cinematic New Wave . That means the couple don't kiss, they don't make love, they don't fish or swim--they talk about their relationship.)

Meanwhile, on the ethnographic side of the film, the people live hardscrabble lives because their income depends on the uncertainties of fishing. They are in a constant cat-and-mouse game with the public health authorities and the police, because they sometimes fish in contaminated water. As one character says, "Yes, the water is contaminated, but I haven't heard of anyone dying because they ate our fish."

The good news is that the villagers help one another. It's clearly a cooperative situation, and that's how they survive. However, their life is hard, and they're always one step away from disaster.

Philippe Noiret, even as a young man of 25, gives us the first view of the talent that he developed over the years. Monfort was his equal as an actor. She was 32 when the film was completed, but looked no older than Noiret. She had an unusual beauty, unlike the perfect beauty of Catherine Deneuve. In fact, Monfort looks like an actor Ingmar Bergman would have chosen to star in one of his films.

People have pointed out that some of the shots in La Pointe Courte resemble Ingmar Bergman's work. The fact is that Bergman's film Persona, which clearly has some similar shots, was completed in 1966, 11 years after Varda's film. My compliments to Bergman, who had the genius to recognize greatness in another director.

In many ways, the French Cinematic New Wave was a cooperative enterprise. The great director Alain Resnais was the editor of La Pointe Courte. Resnais had trained as an editor, but was already directing his own films in 1955. We can't tell how much his expertise helped fledgling filmmaker Varda, but my guess would be that his contribution was substantial.

We saw this film as part of an Agnès Varda retrospective in the wonderful Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House in Rochester, NY. It would be better to see it on the large screen. However, if that's not an option, see it on the small screen. This film is both an aesthetic pleasure and a movie of historical importance. If you love cinema, this film is a must!

Highlights:

• Visually often very beautiful.

• The exploration into marriage and what happens to a relationship after the initial thrill, discovery, and romance phase transitions into less pyrotechnics, and just knowing the other person almost as a part of yourself. The woman (Silvia Monfort) misses what she once had, whereas her husband (Philippe Noiret) is more content, and the two talk about it in very honest ways.

• The film seems to be right at the nexus of Italian neorealism and the French New Wave, with interesting aspects of each. It shows us the world of these (real) working class fishermen with their homes filled with kids, and does so with the flair of creative technique. Hooray it was made by a woman director, Agnès Varda.

• Loved the jousting scenes in the canal.

• Also loved the black cat doing an impromptu stretch in the background of one scene, effectively stealing it from the couple.

Lowlights:

• The story is lacking. There's a point in putting the cultural traditions of the fishing villagers and their occasional struggles with life side by side with this couple's difficulties in the cultural tradition of marriage, but the connective tissue is tenuous, and there isn't a lot going on here that's truly compelling.

• While the marital conflict is interesting and the dialogue explores it reasonably well, the way the actors deliver their discussion is so passionless it's as if they were sleepwalking through their roles. I believe it's meant to reflect the state their relationship has gotten to, but I think it was carried a little too far.

• The score is weirdly jaunty, and it's awful. It's almost as if the newness of the film style made figuring out what type of music would go with it a mystery, either that or it was an attempt to breathe life into what is a pretty quiet film. Either way, it doesn't work.

• Did we need the shot of the dead cat?

I am not a film historian or a fan of Nouvelle Vague. I wanted to see this film because it gave me the opportunity to see my hero, Philippe Noiret, when he was just 26. Thankfully we began by watching the interview w/ Varda, which really gives you a solid understanding of why this film was/is so important, mostly having to do with it being so innovative for its time, and its place as an influence on filmmakers that followed. The 2 story lines did not engage or interest me really.But the visuals were often terrific. And oddly enough, we had just the night before, watched Clash by Night, an American film of the same time which was shot on location in the fishing community of Monterey CA. While visuals were often excellent there as well,in Clash by Night the film really was the STORY, and a very passionate one at that.

La Pointe-Courte was also really important as an example of one of the few important "First Films' of a director,especially a woman director in 1955 , and really especially, one who had no previous experience in film making and no knowledge of film history.