Tuesday 25 October 2016

Maudites lunettes noires! – Agnes Varda's "Les fiancés du Pont Macdonald"

If you think about the French Nouvelle Vague, some of the things that may come to your mind are


Jean-Pierre Leaud's confused look at the end of Les quatrecents coups,

Jean Seberg's striped t-shirts in A bout de souffle,

Jeanne Moreau's fake moustache in Jules et Jim,

Jean-Paul Belmondo's blue face in Pierrot le fou.




Yet, Nouvelle Vague also means Jean-Luc Godard's black sunglasses.

  



Worried that the viewer could get bored towards the end of her feature Cléo de 5 a 7 (1961), film director Agnes Varda jotted down a short story.


“The heroes of this story are Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard. The truth behind this film, my wish 

to do it in this way, is that I had enough of Godard's dark sunglasses, very dark; one could never see 

his eyes. And I knew – I had seen – that he had beautiful eyes. So I made up a silly story.”







By the way, Cléo de 5 a 7 (1961) is not at all boring.

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