The Complete Films of Agnès Varda

“Oh my gosh. This Agnès Varda box set, which has, I think, all of her films: The Complete Films of Agnès Varda. So one of my favorite of Agnès Varda’s films is the documentary The Gleaners and I. And it’s essentially about people, gleaners, who… they, like, collect food that’s not being sold. But it’s also about herself as a documentarian, as a filmmaker, how she gleans images and shows you things that maybe people would discard, and there’s this really lovely scene where she’s, I think, shooting out of a car window and then she says, “I glean this,” and you see her hand come into frame and take the image, in a way, and it’s… it’s really lovely. It’s really fun.”

“Thank God there’s Agnès Varda. Agnès Varda, I think I saw all her movies. And actually the one I hadn’t seen I saw last year, and one of them I loved was Lions Love. There’s something about this movie, about the peculiarity of human soul, human relationships, that I absolutely adore. This is a piece of art. And Cléo from 5 to 7 is a game changer. She portrayed women, because there’s, of course, Cléo, but the other women, even the small parts in the movie. Like, I think I remember– was it a taxi driver or… that was a woman. And she… She portrayed those women as if it was normal to be free. And I thought it was so strong to portray women that way, when in the real world it was not the case. But she’s like, “Yeah, look, it’s going to happen one day.” Well, we still have a long way to go though, but… Yeah. This is– I mean, if you want to discover cinema through the eyes of a visionary and a wide and free soul, I would definitely recommend Agnès Varda. And not because she’s a woman. Just because she’s a genius.”

“And… I am gonna cap off with my Agnès Varda box set. Cléo de 5 à 7.”

“Well, I think it's almost time to go. So, as a final pick, I'm going to end where I started, with an exploration of the body. And I'm going to take Agnès Varda's magnificent collection. I can't believe that the Criterion Collection have gathered all of her work together in this beautiful edition, complete with essays and all the films and some of the photographs, all collected. She was an unbelievable photographer. What an image-maker. And I think as a... Female working in films, the depiction of womanhood in all its stages, never losing interest, pursuing female identity as it changes, Agnès Varda gave that experience honestly and openly and daringly to all of us. So, thank you, Agnès. And you're coming with me, and thank you for having me.”

“Okay, so… We love her, right, Agnès Varda. I got to meet her. If you haven't seen the documentary that JR did, that's such a beautiful, beautiful film about her. And he got her, she got him. And they were soulmates in the most beautiful way. And I just love all her movies. I love Vagabond. She was just one of my faves, so… Take this one.”

“Agnès Varda is someone who, without really planning it, but during the editing stage of Pictures of Ghosts, Agnès Varda came to talk to me many times as an imaginary friend. And this happens many times when you're making a film. Sometimes you're in trouble and you just think of someone and you begin to remember his or her films. And Varda, in a way, she helped me get through the film, and I love her.”

“I actually haven't dived in heavily to Agnès Varda. I changed the errors of my ways and I watched Cléo from 5 to 7. Oh my god, it's like every frame is a is a painting. Just such a beautiful, beautiful movie. And then I watched Vagabond and Le Bonheur. I don't know if my French is any good, but the movies are fantastic. I mean, look at that, even that is so beautiful.”

“So first I will pick, it will be the box, very heavy one, of Agnès Varda. Two films of her which I was watching as a teenager in Warsaw made such an impact on me that I can say that it's also because of her that I became a filmmaker. One it was Cléo from 5 to 7, but second one was the revelation to me and till now I'm advising it to the young filmmakers and especially women filmmakers to watch and to see how it is possible to say so much with such a little, little means. That is Le Bonheur, Happiness. It's my favorite. I hope that I'm following her path.”

“And the, the coffret of Agnès, is right here and I have the chance to be on it, with Faces Places. But to be honest, in there, there's everything. One that I love from 1975, it's Daguerréotypes. She said, I'll go as far as I'm plugging something in my house, I make it go through the little box and so it plugs my camera and I'm going to go and meet every store in my own street and talk to people. And she lived Rue Daguerre and it's an incredible documentary about a Paris of a time that disappeared, but about also love stories and I don't know, it's just incredible. So of course I have to get this one.”

“I told you I was going deep and hard, and Varda is the one. I'm here for all my homages, I'm here for people whose cinema I just can't live without to help me make cinema and continue to make cinema and go back to again and again and again, and this is the box set of Agnès Varda, and I'll have everything of Varda. Varda has passed, but her work remains alive here, and it's in my bag. Hear that? That's a box set right there.”

“The Varda set. She is my grand high priestess. I just absolutely love the way Agnès Varda sees the world and tells stories. I feel like she has such a singular voice that at once is constantly innovating and building upon new ways of filmmaking and seeing the world. I'll probably stop there because I could go on and on, but I feel so lucky to really be in this little closet.”

“And another person I need to do my homework on, and my wife and I were just saying how and where do we find her films, is Agnès Varda, whose birthday is coming up. And we've been talking about wanting to see these films and trying to find them, and now I have them all.”

“Oh no, Agnès! Ça c'est... Agnès, I went through many different relationships with her because she was one of my mother's best friends. She, my mother adored her and rightfully so. But they did a documentary called Jane B. Par Agnès V. And that's of course the reference for my film called Jane by Charlotte, Jane par Charlotte. She was in our lives when I was an adolescent because she was doing this documentary about my mother and I was so annoyed with her because she was living in our house for what seemed like a year filming my mother all the... But and I had to close my door and try to escape this whole camera crew, so really annoying and then and then just brilliant and then I then I discovered her films. I think the first one I discovered was Cléo de 5 à 7. So Agnès, very special Agnès, but I'll give this to my mother. Voilà.”

“I'm definitely not leaving the Criterion closet without this box set of the filmography of Agnès Varda. She is a hero and a champion, and I've only really seen a handful of her works, Cléo of course, Vagabond, and her later ones, but I really want to dig, dig deeper into her body of work.”

“[Translated] Look, I received a wonderful gift, this is my friend Agnès Varda. She liked that we were both called Agnès. Agnès V by agnès b. Agnès b. By Agnès V. She had ideas like that. She was wonderful. I had dinner at her place a short while before she sadly left us and I'd seen her at the Venice Biennale, dressed as a potato. It was 108 °F. The poor thing. I even gave her my hotel room, because she staying at an apartment with some friends. And I was so happy to be able to give Agnès... I had an air-conditioned room. I think she remembered that whole story for a long time. Anyway, she was a wonderful woman and a wonderful film director. Really.”

“Oh yeah, well I do, it's always, I feel like we're just talking about, it's like talking about Varda and Bresson and Pialat. Whoa, this is so good, there's so much good stuff. Do you have this? I don't think I do. You should take it, you should take it. I'm going to totally butcher this, this, but Daguerréotypes is my favorite of all the films in this collection. I think the reason I like it so much is because I find it very difficult to talk about film editing, even as an editor. It just, of all the film crafts, it's kind of the impossible one to actually talk about well. I think it, a lot of people like to talk about pace or things like that, but that's just one really, really little thing. It's it's very difficult to actually talk about film editing, but in this film there's a sequence in one of the local cafes where a magician is putting on his act. And during that sequence she's showing you how she's kind of making the associations while she's making them. She's kind of showing you the manipulation of the work, and it's very self-conscious, but it's not academic, there's nothing like didactic about the way she's showing it to you. It's very, very playful and there's, it's just kind of, it feels almost like a precursor to some something like what to like maybe what like John Wilson is doing now. It's some of the best editing I've ever seen and you can see it, because most of the time you can't see editing, but in this film you can see it and that makes me really, you watch it.”

“You can’t talk about Jacques without talking about Ms. Varda. Yeah! One of the great film love stories. These two incredible artists. One thing I love about film is the dialog between artists, and not only between each other. Michel Legrand tying them together in so many ways. But if you look at Umbrellas of Cherbourg and you look at Do the Right Thing, you see artists in dialog. So, French New Wave is coming in the bag.”

“I'm happy to take this Varda collection home. It'll take a lot of my time, that's wonderful. I remember we're going with the Bertrand Tavernier's wife and Agnès to a museum, in, I don't know whether it was in France or Italy. And, when we got in there, there was an artwork, a piece of art of a nun, and she was sitting on a chair. And Agnès walked in there and they just seemed to go together, and I took, a wonderful photograph of Agnès standing next to the nun in the chair. It's, and it's one of my favorite photographs. I'm sure if you look my name up, you can find it somewhere. And if you could get me a, a cheese sandwich, I'll sit down and start watching them.”

“And here, it's like I could be holding them up together, Varda. I really love her so much. You know who she reminds me of? There's that filmmaker, Alice Guy-Blaché, who was like the first, arguably the first fiction filmmaker of all time. She was French, but then she came over to the US and was living in Fort Lee, New Jersey, before Fort Lee moved out to be Hollywood, and I feel like Agnès Varda really picked, like lived in her shoes when she was alive. Interesting anecdote about Vagabond: I watched, when I watched Maurice Pialat's À nos amours, To Our Loves, Sandrine Bonnaire was in that. I think that movie is beautiful, but I also think it's really important in 2022 to be able to contextualize it, right? Sandrine Bonnaire was like 14 or 15 years old, there's like full frontal nudity, it's important conversations to have. And, I watched Vagabond right after, that also has Sandrine Bonnaire, and I remember just in my head they're kind of linked, where I was like, oh she went from like that character's in Maurice Pialat's world and like little troubles and then she ends up like as a vagabond and that's what happens. Which is not true, but if I was ever asked to plan a double feature, I might put those two movies back to back.”

“Agnès Varda. I would call this a discovery pick for me. I'm taking this home to educate myself, because I've seen Le Bonheur and I would say that movie inspired the song "My Winter" on my new album. I love that movie, and I'd like to see more of what she's done, so I'm going to take this home and find out.”

“And Agnès Varda’s film. And I knew Agnès and her husband, Jacques Demy, a little bit. We did this, and the toughest thing I remember was speaking French with Catherine Deneuve. It just drove me crazy.”