French New Wave Cinema

In September 1997, Agnes Varda introduced a brand new 35mm print of her first feature film, La Pointe Courte, made in 1954, to an admiring audience at Yale University. She had seen no other films before it perhaps aside from Citizen Kane, or at least this is what she claimed. It achieved an almost cult status in film history as the first nouvelle vague.

Varde was described as a pioneer of the new wave of cinema, especially so because she was the only female director. The production of La Pinte Court by her own tiny company completely outside the film industry and on a much smaller budget than a typical french film since it came from inheritances and loans from friends and family. She had no professional training and didn't get an 'official French Film Industry Membership Card' until later on. She had a lot of control over scriptwriting and location, a mix of actors of various levels of experience was unheard of in 1950's France. 


The materiality of La Point Courte is present straight from the opening title sequence, one particularly noteworthy example being a close up shot of grain of wood, revealed upon zooming outwards to be a section of a tree trunk. This was followed by a long tracking shot that leads the audience into the nearby village, which are closely followed up by straightforward and lateral tracking shots of trees, the straights of the neighborhood and the fishing houses and various shacks. Varda's direction allows the audience to truly immerse themselves in this location through the seemingly random shots of improvised live in act, the interior of a house where a woman feeds her children, one of many themes that run consistently throughout the entirety of the film. Varda's documentation of people's lives, including but not limited to their eating of meals, gossip and chatter, arguments and quarreling, courting, working are subtly weaved into context with narrative devices. Varda emloys the use of these camera angles and many others that were new amongst the times of the new wave of French cinema, including those seen in theatrical interpretations of stories where a character speaks directly to the camera, establishing a direct mode of a address and perhaps breaking the fourth wall.