Ostensibly about the chateaux of the Loire, the documentary only includes eight minutes of footage about these; the rest is about the trees, the gardens, the gardeners, people's hats and other such curiosities that interested the director more.
Though disappointed she was being asked to make a commissioned short after having made a feature three years before, she was encouraged by her Left Bank colleague Resnais to take the assignment because she would find "your own little music" in the subject matter.
The film was well-received critically; it was selected for the 1958 Cannes Film Festival and the Festival de Tours, a festival of short films where Varda met her future husband Jacques Demy, another important filmmaker of the French new wave whose ouvre includes films such as Lola (1961) and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964).
Varda's first short film, Ô saisons, Ô châteaux, was commissioned by the Office National du Tourisme and designed to promote the castles of France's Loire Valley.
Before shooting, Varda departed on a scouting trip with two tools in hand: her Rolleiflex camera and Hachette's Guide Bleu for the region. The tourist guide served as a tool for planning her scouting visits, but more important than this it inspired the structure of her film.