Cléo from 5 to 7

(Cléo de 5 à 7)

Digital Restoration
BAMPFA Student Committee Pick

featuring

Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dorothée Blanck, Michel Legrand,

The film that established Agnès Varda’s international reputation, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a classic work of the French New Wave, distinguished by its original form and intimate portraiture. Presenting events that appear to unfold in real time, Cléo chronicles two hours in the life of a pop singer (Corinne Marchand), who is waiting to learn if she has cancer. Shot entirely on location in the streets of Paris, the film features a score by Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and cameos by Legrand, Jean-Luc Godard, and Anna Karina. Cléo demonstrates one of Varda’s favorite themes—that “one isn’t born a woman, one becomes one.” In the New Yorker, Pauline Kael described Varda’s work as “one of the few films directed by a woman in which the viewer can sense a difference. . . . [It] sustains an unsentimental yet subjective tone that is almost unique in the history of movies."

Susan Oxtoby
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Agnès Varda
Cinematographer
  • Jean Rabier
Language
  • French
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • B&W/Color
  • DCP
  • 90 mins
Source
  • Janus Films
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View Cléo from 5 to 7 documents  

Social realism on the big screen (article), Berkeleyan, 2009

Agnès Varda: cinécriture (flyer), Pacific Film Archive, 2009

Cleo from 5 to 7 (review), Village Voice, Ed Halter, 2006

Varda from '54 to '92 (program note), Cinematheque Ontario/a division of Toronto International Film Festival Group, Susan Oxtoby, 1999

Agnès Varda's special light (article), Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas, 1997

Agnes Varda filmographie (booklet), France. Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Bernard Bastide, 1994

Cleo from 5 to 7 (program note), 1981

Dossier : Agnès Varda, une réalisatrice française (article), Visuelles des Femmes et Des Images, 1980

Cleo from Five to Seven (1952), Lion's Love (1969), Agnes Varda (program note), Women in Film/Chicago, Barbara Bernstein, 1974

Two classics of the French New Wave (review), Daily Californian (Berkeley, Calif.), Cynthia Garratt, 1974

Displaying 10 of 20 publicly available documents.


View all Cléo from 5 to 7 documentation on CineFiles.