A fascinating look-back into a different world which Agnes Varda captured of California during the late ’60s and early ’80s, “Agnes Varda in California” are documentaries and experimental films from the French filmmaker worth watching. And yet another wonderful set included in the Criterion Collection’s Eclipse Series.
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TITLE: Agnes Varda in California – Eclipse Series #43
YEAR OF FILM: Uncle Yanco (1967), Black Panther (1968), Lions Love (…and Lies) (1969), Murs Murs (1980), Documenteur (1981)
DURATION: Uncle Yanco (19 minutes), Black Panther (28 minutes), Lions Love (…and Lies) (112 minutes), Murs Murs (82 minutes), Documenteur (65 minutes)
DVD INFORMATION: color, English and French with English subtitles, 1:37:1 and 1:66:1 aspect ratio
COMPANY: The Criterion Collection
RELEASED DATE: August 11, 2015
Lions Love (…and Lies) (1969)
Directed by Agnes Varda
Written by Agnes Varda
Produced by Agnes Varda
Music by Joseph Byrd
Cinematography by Stevan Larner
Edited by Robert Dalva, Carolyn Hicks
Art Direction by Jack Wright III
Mur Murs (1981)
Written and Directed by Agnes Varda
Cinematography by Nurith Aviv
Edited by Bob Gould, Sabine Mamou
Documenteur (1981)
Written and Directed by Agnes Varda
Cinematography by Nurith Aviv, Affonso Beato, Bob Carr
Music by Georges Delerue
Edited by Bob Gould, Sabine Mamou
Starring:
Lions Love (…and Lies)
Viva as Viva
Gerome Ragni as Jim
James Rado as Jerry
Eddie Constantine
Peter Bogdanovich
Billie Dixon
Richard Bright
Jim Morrison
Rip Torn
Agenes Varda
Andy Warhol
Mur Murs (1980)
Juliet Berto as La Visiteuse
Judy Baca
Mathieu Demy
Arno Jordan
Kent Twitchell
Documenteur (1981)
Sabine Mamou as Emilie Cooper
Mathieu Demy as Martin Cooper
Lisa Blok-Linson as Lisa, l’amie
Tina Odom as Tina, la serveuse
Gary Feldman as L’ecrivain a sa fenetre
Tom Taplin as Tom Cooper
The legendary French filmmaker Agnès Varda (Cléo from 5 to 7), whose remarkable career began in the 1950s and has continued into the twenty-first century, produced some of her most provocative works while living on the West Coast of the United States. After temporarily relocating from France to California in the late sixties with her husband, Jacques Demy, so that he could make his first Hollywood film, Varda became entranced by the politics, youth culture, and sunshine of the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, and created documentary explorations and fictional narratives—sometimes within the same film. She returned a decade later, and made more fascinating portraits of outsiderness. Her five revealing, entertaining California films, encompassing shorts and features, are collected in this set, which demonstrates that Varda was as deft an artist in unfamiliar terrain as she was on her own turf.
3-DVD BOX SET INCLUDES:
UNCLE YANCO BLACK PANTHERS Agnès Varda’s first California films were two short documentaries made in the San Francisco Bay Area, one personal, the other political. In Uncle Yanco, Varda tracks down a Greek emigrant relative she’s never met in Sausalito. In Black Panthers, she turns her camera on an Oakland demonstration protesting the imprisonment of activist and Black Panthers cofounder Huey P. Newton. These films chart a course from the delightful to the urgent, each in its own way revealing Varda’s curious, empathetic nature.
LIONS LOVE (. . . AND LIES) Agnès Varda goes to Los Angeles, taking New York counterculture with her. In a rented house in the sun-soaked Hollywood hills, a woman and two men—Viva, of Warhol Factory fame, and James Rado and Gerome Ragni, who created and starred in the rock musical Hair—delight in each others’ bodies while musing on love, stardom, and politics. They are soon joined by underground director Shirley Clarke, playing herself as well as functioning as a surrogate for Varda. Lions Love (. . . and Lies) is a metacinematic inquiry into the alternating currents of whimsy and tragedy that typified late sixties America.
MUR MURS DOCUMENTEUR After returning to Los Angeles from France in 1979, Agnès Varda created two films, different in form and tone yet complexly interwoven. Mur Murs is a kaleidoscopic documentary about the striking murals that decorate the city; Documenteur is a small-scale fiction about a divorced mother and her child (played by Varda’s own son) living a quiet existence on L.A.’s margins. Taken together, these films, with their overlapping images and ideas, sketch a portrait of a metropolis at once sprawling and isolating, bursting with life and haunted by loneliness.
In 1954, Agnès Varda in her late ’20s had a passion about novels and had dreams of wanting to direct her own film.
But in France, one must go through protocol and having learn the ropes of becoming a director.
Varda never watched many films, she never went to film school but she knew what she wanted to do and that was make a film. Varda was inspired by William Faulkner’s novel “The Wild Palms†(also known as “If I Forget Thee Jerusalemâ€) and how the novel would focus on two unrelated stories, one about a couple and another about two escaped convicts.
In Varda’s screenplay, her story would focus on a couple and a fishing town in the Port of Sète where Varda and family lived during wartime and would visit every summer. The location would be the setting for “La Pointe Courteâ€.
So, she and her mother put in around $14,000 of her own money and Varda recruited two thespian friends Silvia Monfort as Elle and Philippe Noiret as Lui to play a couple and the residents of the fishing village to play a part in the film.
All actors and talent would volunteer their time for this film and she would work with a short crew which included filmmaker and well-known film editor, Alain Resnais (Hiroshima mon amourâ€, “Last Year at Marienbadâ€). And thus, Varda’s low-budget independent film “La Point Courte†was made.
The film would be known for bucking traditional filmmaking, showcasing a creative style of filmmaking before Nouvelle Vague and during its run at Cannes International Film Festival and screened to the intellectual cineaste, the film would receive critical praise and Varda a few years later would receive the distinction as one of the primary filmmakers, let alone a female filmmaker, who would inspire the French New Wave.
Also, giving her the title of “Grandmother of the French New Wave†(or “Ancestor of the French New Waveâ€).
Back in 2007, The Criterion Collection celebrated Varda’s career by releasing a DVD box set titled “4 by Agnès Varda†featuring “La Pointe Courte†and the three films: “Clèo from 5 to 7″, “Vagabond†and “Le Bonheurâ€.
In 2015, The Criterion Collection will once again release another set through their Eclipse Series line titled “Agnes Varda in California – Eclipse Series #43”.
The set will feature five films: “Uncle Yanco” (1967), “Black Panthers” (1968), “Lions Love (…And Lies” ) (1969), “Mur Murs” (1980) and “Documenteur” (1981).
Each of these films were restored in 2013 at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with The Film Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and Cine-Tamaris.
VIDEO & AUDIO:
Each of these films were restored in 2013 at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with The Film Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and Cine-Tamaris. Overall, picture quality depends on each film but watching the DVD on my 4K TV, I felt that all films especially “Uncle Yanco”, “Black Panthers” and “Lions Love (…And Lies)” look very good on DVD. There is a good amount of grain and noise, especially for “Documenteur”.
Audio is crystal clear and I didn’t detect any significant hiss.
Subtitles are in English.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Eclipse Series DVD’s unfortunately do not come with any special features. But with each DVD, there is an insert of information or information printed on the interior DVD cover (which can be read since the DVD slim cases are clear) on the film.
“Agnes Varda in California – Eclipse Series #43” is a fascinating set featuring five films directed by Agnes Varda during her time in California. Included are “Uncle Yanco” (1967), “Black Panthers” (1968), “Lions Love (…And Lies” ) (1969), “Mur Murs” (1980) and “Documenteur” (1981).
The first three films were shot when she and her husband, actor Jacques Demy temporarily relocated to California after his success starring in the film “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”. The last two films when she returned back to California in the early ’80s.
But during the late ’60s, Varda was able to capture the youth movement and also culture that was the sign of the times.
In the 1967 short film “Uncle Yanco”, a fictional tale in which Agnes Varda plays herself, looking for a relative that she has never met, a Greek emigrant living in the boathouse area in Sausalito.
While author Phil Frank has done a wonderful job covering the history of the boathouses in his 2008 book “Houseboats of Sausalito”, Agnes Varda’s film is a wonderful snapshot of Sausalito during the late-’60s.
While “Uncle Yanco” was conceived by Varda in a few days after meeting Yanco, it’s a fascinating short film showcasing Yanco’s artwork but also the city of Sausalito.
The second film featured is “Black Panthers” which Agnes Varda shot in 1968. This is a documentary capturing the African American radical movement of the Black Panthers and was intended for a French television network, but never aired. But the film would give people a voice and the concerns of African Americans at that time. In this case, the protest against the imprisonment of African American activist Huey P. Newton.
The third film “Lions Love (…And Lies)” is a fascinating film for its time. Varda who called the film an “amorphous meditation on late-sixties American counterculture and politics) but a film about the carefree living of three individuals in Los Angeles in 1969.
Showcasing actress Viva (best known for starring in Andy Warhol’s experimental films), James Rado and Gerome Ragni, the three play themselves as they sleep together, have sex together and have fun, living free. And are asked by actual underground filmmaker Shirley Clarke, that she wants to shoot them.
In some ways, this film is experimental as it seems that it’s a documentary but it’s a film, as we see a brief flash as the video features underground filmmaker Shirley Clarke, but then suddenly for a brief few seconds, it changes to Agnes Varda wearing the same outfit.
But the film tries to capture the reality of the three individuals, from driving around Los Angeles (which the film is no doubt a time stamp of LA during the late ’60s) but also the reactions to the people during the news coverage of Robert Kennedy’s assassination, to possibly a re-enactment of Hollywood execs discussing the budget of Clarke’s film and whether a director should have artistic control over the final cut of the film.
In many ways, the film is fictional, but also it’s not. The situations that inspired the film are based on Agnes Varda’s real-life dilemma when she was in negotiations with Columbia Pictures for a scene she had written called “Peace and Love” and refused to grant her creative control on the final cut of the film.
In the fourth film “Mur Murs”, which was shot in 1980, and a return by Agnes Varda to Los Angeles. During her stay in Los Angeles, she created “Mur Murs”, a documentary of the large-scale murals around Los Angeles.  The murals featured are those located in Mexican and African American communities and Varda interviews those who have painted the murals and learn the reason of what inspired these people to create them.
In the final fifth film featured in “Agnes Varda in California – Eclipse Series #43”, “Documenteur” is a drama with a documentary feel. The film revolves around a divorced mother named Emilie (portrayed by her editor, Sabine Mamou) and her young so, Martin (portrayed by her son, Mathieu Demy), living together in a house on the beach.
Varda has called the film “the shadow of the first one…what you don’t see in Los Angeles, the nowhere city inside the city”.
But the film is no doubt self-reflective as Varda at the time was separated from Jacques Demy, living alone with her son in Venice Beach and trying to live life in California during tough times in her personal life.
Among these films, among my favorites were “Uncle Yanco” as it showcased Sausalito during the late ’60s (which was great to see!), “Black Panthers” was a fascinating look at African American activism during the late ’60s, while “Lions Love (…And Lies)” was fascinating for its bohemian, free living among its characters but also seeing the experimental touches that Varda added to the film, to show that the film is also part of her life.
While “Mur Murs” and “Black Panthers” are more documentary in style, “Documenteur” is a different style of film as it looks like a documentary in terms of how the film was created, but the more you watch, you can’t help but see the sadness depicted in the film, no doubt, possibly how Varda felt living alone with her young son Mathieu (who also plays the main son, Martin, in the film).
The film no doubt resonates with you in terms of how the character is so isolated in Los Angeles, yet trying to do what she can to make her son happy. It is visually poetic but yet the opposite of “Lions Love (…And Lies)”, which was created over a decade earlier.
For any cineastes who are expecting Varda ala Nouvelle Vague, each of these films are nothing like her French films. If anything, “Agnes Varda in California” is a set showcasing Varda’s interest in the youth culture of the late ’60s, the Los Angeles community and its murals during the ’80s through documentaries. While we get two films that are self-reflective and are drawn from Varda’s own personal experiences at the time.
A fascinating look-back into a different world which Agnes Varda captured of California during the late ’60s and early ’80s, “Agnes Varda in California” are documentaries and experimental films from the French filmmaker worth watching. And yet another wonderful set included in the Criterion Collection’s Eclipse Series.
