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.