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La Pointe Courte precludes the fun offered by the leisurely jaunts of the Cahiers du Cinema French New Wave group (Francois Truffaut, sometimes Godard, et al) and imposes the same intellectual calisthenics of Agnès Varda’s fellow Left Bank group (Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, et al). Her second film, Cleo from 5 to 7, has more in common with the former camp, but her first effort belongs entirely to the latter. I’ve been anticipating this film ever since Bruce Kawin, a film history professor at CU Boulder, pointed out it is the true first film of the New Wave. Hmmm… even before The 400 Blows? Or even Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows? Kawin and other scholars may be right about Varda’s place in history, but La Pointe Courte is nowhere near as coherent or engaging as other early New Wave(esque) films. To be honest, I had no idea what Varda was going for after finishing the film and was left wanting an explanation. An explanation, thankfully, the Criterion DVD supplements are always willing to provide.

I discovered Varda’s intention was to mimic the narrative structure of William Faulkner’s long overlooked novel Wild Palms. The novel has two totally unrelated stories told side by side; one is a love story taking place in 1938 and the other is about the ordeal of a prisoner in 1927. The only physical link between the two stories is a prison in Mississippi. La Pointe Courte, a small Mediterranean village on the coast of France, is the physical setting of the two unrelated stories being told in Varda’s film; one is a love story and the other is about the sociopolitical ordeal of the village’s fishermen.

Regardless of the film’s appealing inspiration, I quickly lost interest in the love story portion; the couple’s pseudo-intellectual voiceover musings on the nature of their affection and relationship comes across as pompous and irrelevant. Their boring story never sits well with vignettes of a destitute village and its crumbling economy, threatened by the disintegration of its sole export. Perhaps it’s not supposed to, like Faulkner’s novel. After all, Varda does not attempt to link her stories through aesthetic or narrative devices, literally cutting from one to the other in a completely arbitrary way. The result is frustrating and dull. What might have worked in the realm of literature does not necessarily translate well to the realm of cinema. Sure, I can see why this technique was impressive in 1956 and why La Pointe Courte is considered the precursor to the French New Wave; it is fresh and entirely different on a purely aesthetic level. Yet despite the boldness of its narrative structure and moments of remarkable journalistic cinematography akin to neorealism, it lacks any real emotion.

This review originally appeared in DenverProjectionBooth.blogspot.com in August 2008.

Peculiar and fascinating film basically being a depiction of people at the lower end of Abraham Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs (the villagers) paralleled with two people, Elle and Louis, concerned with issues at the top

The conversations Elle and Louis have are presented to us in a surreal way, a poetic meandering both physically and cognitively as they wander about La Pointe Court where Louis grew up (Elle is from Paris)…they are conversations that could be had between any disintegrating couple struggling for direction and connection, easily transported to melodrama, mumblecore, or self or the people next door, timeless concerns about the loss of passion, disillusionment, where to from here, we love each other but we are so very different, they’re in grief, they’re companionable, the want to touch but they’ve touched before and been hurt, there’s been betrayal, dreams, dashed dreams, Louis is calm and will ing to settle, Elle does not trust this….and so on.

These musings and agonisings are contrasted sharply with the life of the villagers who have no time nor the inclination for such refined indulgences…. as one observes of Elle and Louis “they talk too much to be happy”. The folk of La Pointe Courte are concerned with outwitting the local health authorities, protecting their simple livelihood, death is a matter of fact affair, as is marriage and birth. They are not insensible to romance, we see the men at table and one fellow sings a song “I Love You and Only You” while the women giggle outside, there is a brewing romance between young Anna and Raphael but it is clear this will proceed in the perfunctory way within the well understood by all constructs as their parents, and their parents before them.

It further endeared itself to me by being full of cats as deliberate placement. I love all B&W cinematography, and loved watching this, the light and shades, close attention to detail, the camera glides and settles and the river jousting scene must have been a challenge but is effective capturing the atmosphere of the occasion. It is a particularly interesting film in its prescience by Varda, and historical cinematic context etc.

10/10

Surely every director is inspired by something, to have watched at least one film before embarking upon their career. Imagine what could be achieved by those who have not, who have no example to follow but their own.It would be as if it were the very beginning of cinema; they would surely differ greatly from established convention. I’m talking about Agnés Varda, a 25-year-old photographer, who claimed to have seen little more than a handful of films before directing her debut. Unlike Cahiers du Cinema, she wasn’t an enthusiastic critic and fan seeking to change the landscape of cinema. She was merely following her intuition.
Agnés Varda’s first film, La Pointe-Courte (1954) is one of my favourite films. It shows such a joy to be part of cinema. It also has a unique surreal beauty that has not been seen before or since. And the opening theme is incomparable: At first it just seems like some old patriotic march. But at the very moment I realise that, it suddenly feels more modern (like, say, a TV theme you hate more and more each time you hear it). And then it jumps… into antiquity, like the music of Ancient Mesopotamia. A timeless, underrated piece of music endlessly wandering the millennia. True, you rarely see it around anywhere and almost nobody mentions it so reverently, but I prefer to be my own personality.