Craig J. Clark
For most aspiring filmmakers, the road to their first feature generally runs through a short subject or two, quite often made at film school. Agnès Varda was not most aspiring filmmakers, however. She had barely seen any movies, in fact, when she decided to make one of her own, viewing it as an extension of the still photography she supported herself with. Completely self-financed, with a sizable portion of its already miniscule budget made up of what Varda later referred to as “sweat equity” (i.e. nobody got paid, but all had a piece of the action if and when it turned a profit), La Pointe Courte was shot in 1954 with a crew of seven and screened the following year in the marketplace at Cannes. The journey there was especially arduous, but Varda faced the challenge head-on, setting a precedent she would continue to follow for the next 65 years.
La Pointe Courte’s construction was inspired by William Faulkner’s The Wild Palms, which told parallel, unrelated stories in alternating chapters. Starting with her choice of setting – the fishing village of Sète in the South of France, where the Varda family spent the early part of the Second World War after fleeing the Nazi incursion into Belgium – she conceived of a neorealist-style drama about the lives of its residents without ever having seen an Italian neorealist film. (Her editor, Alain Resnais, brought the comparison to her attention.) In order to depict them as accurately as possible, Varda spent time with the fishermen and their wives, parents, and children, collecting their stories and (with their permission) incorporating them into her scenario. This explains why, in a characteristic display of generosity, Varda shares her writer/director title screen with “les habitants de La Pointe-Courte.”
The other half of the film concerns a couple on the verge of breaking up after four years of marriage. She’s from Paris and is dissatisfied with the state of their relationship. He is originally from La Pointe Courte and is happy to be back after twelve years. Significantly, this trip is the first time they’re been on vacation together, which is one of her main gripes – along with the fact that he cheated on her. The way he tells it, though, that only made him realize how much he loves her, a theme Varda would return to in her third feature, 1965’s Le Bonheur. She’s also upset by how calmly he’s taking things, but that may be a function of the laid-back atmosphere, which he’s missed while he’s been in Paris. “Just living is a pleasure here,” he says, but it takes some time for her to see things the same way.
While Varda had the residents of La Pointe Courte play themselves – and had to coax some into appearing on camera – she used professional actors for the couple since their scenes are more dialogue-intensive. As the man, she cast Philippe Noiret, a stage actor at the dawn of his long and illustrious career. His counterpart, Silvia Monfort, had already acted for Bresson (in 1943’s Angels of Sin) and Cocteau (in 1948’s The Eagle Has Two Heads). Together, they navigate Varda’s self-consciously written dialogue (sample line: “The time is long past when we didn’t know each other”) as they mosey around the village, occasionally bumping into some of its inhabitants. As one says of them, “They talk too much to be happy.” Yet talking, and simply spending time together, convinces them they have something to salvage.
By juxtaposing these two narratives, Varda exposes how one marriage can seem less consequential than the survival of a village’s way of life. Between battling the Board of Health and ducking the fishing patrol, both of which are concerned about the waters they’re fishing in, the men of La Pointe Courte go to great lengths to continue putting food on the table. Meanwhile, their women gossip about a neighbor who’s pregnant for the seventh time and try to smooth the way for a young man and woman beginning their lives together. Even as they face adversity and an uncertain future, certain things still have to run their course.
Since Varda shot La Pointe Courte without sound, the entire film had to be post-dubbed in Paris. As for the challenge of trimming ten hours of footage down to 80 minutes, that fell to Resnais, who had a dozen shorts to his credit, but would not make his first feature until 1959, with his second following two years later. Varda, meanwhile, turned out a handful of shorts, two of them commissions, before seeking financing for her second feature. That turned out to be another low-budget film made in black and white (on location in the streets of Paris this time, and with a sound crew), but 1962’s Cléo from 5 to 7 was an artistic triumph, confirming that she was a born filmmaker. It just took a little time for the world to recognize it.
“La Pointe Courte” is streaming on the Criterion Channel with a boatload of extras, and elsewhere without them.
