Sixty years after it was first released, Cléo from 5 to 7 has finally leapt into the top 20: a slow pace for a film so light on its feet. When was this immaculate feature film, Agnès Varda’s essay on time and space, love and death, ever not on our minds?
Arriving with the first surge of the French New Wave, Cléo from 5 to 7 crackles with the energy and modernity of that cinephile movement, but it’s ultimately an introspective piece, characterised by the philosophical preoccupations of Varda’s Left Bank peers. Corinne Marchand plays Cléo, a blonde pop singer whose vanity relaxes as her anxieties swell. As the film begins, she visits a tarot reader, hoping for good news about the medical test results she is awaiting – but the cards spell only death, and transformation.
While Cléo’s mind is fixed on the future, Varda’s camera captures her in the present tense, killing time in Paris as she ponders her own decay. Echoing Marcel Duchamp’s 1912 painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, Varda dissects a trip down the stairs to emphasise the moment as it passes, one we would otherwise have missed. As Cléo, a Parisian Mrs Dalloway, walks the streets of her city, Varda also captures a broader sense of time, an era in history: Paris in the early 1960s, with its crowds, cafés, shops, music, fashion and cinema. The geography is precise: Varda called the film “the portrait of a woman painted on to a documentary about Paris”.
The film shifts from colour to blackand- white to remind us that this is what cinema does – it transforms life. A film within the film turns the idea into a joke: life makes no sense in monochrome. But Cléo is transformed by the film, by these 90 minutes and the images of herself and her future that confront her everywhere. In real time, Cléo becomes more real, more subject than object, more human, more in tune with the city. She discards her whipped-cream wig and polka dots for a simple black shift. She performs less and feels more.
With the kind of playfulness that Varda enjoyed so much, we could call this ticking- clock film timeless. From the feminist analysis of a woman’s commodified beauty and a celebrity’s self-regarding narcissism to the vulnerable heroine acting out her messy emotions in public, the spectre of war and the fear of disease darkening a midsummer day, Cléo from 5 to 7 feels pertinent to the modern moment. It always will. Marchand’s Cléo was pinned in a point in time, but the film marches on, playing on a loop in our imaginations.
Cleo, a singer and hypochondriac, becomes increasingly worried that she might have cancer while awaiting test results from her doctor.
- 1962
- Not Rated
- Zenith International Films
- 1 h 30 m
- 1962
- Not Rated
- Zenith International Films
- 1 h 30 m
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Summary Cleo, a singer and hypochondriac, becomes increasingly worried that she might have cancer while awaiting test results from her doctor.
Top Cast
91% Positive 20 Reviews
9% Mixed 2 Reviews
0% Negative 0 Reviews
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- Positive Reviews
- Mixed Reviews
- Negative Reviews
91% Positive 20 Reviews
9% Mixed 2 Reviews
0% Negative 0 Reviews
- All Reviews
- Positive Reviews
- Mixed Reviews
- Negative Reviews
Agnes Varda's exquisite New Wave masterpiece, about an hour and a half in the life of a gorgeous, possibly dying chanteuse. [30 Apr 2010, p.31]
In fusing Cleo’s intricate consciousness with the teeming vitality of city life and the fine grain of daily activity, Varda displays her vast artistic inspiration and expands the power of the cinema itself.
Released in 1962, it seems as innovative and influential as any New Wave film.
The film...has an amazing quality of life, animation and hope. [07 Dec 1962, p. 27]
FULL REVIEW
Quietly touching and profound, it epitomises the youthful delight Varda always shows for the tools at her disposal and her sensitive and easeful way of expressing the sways and shifts of life, love and desire.
FULL REVIEW
The film is interesting, although it does become a bit monotonous in its endless shots of the seedy side of Paris. [23 Nov 1962, p.48]
FULL REVIEW
Another French film that fairly glitters with photographic and cinematic "style," yet fails to do more than skim the surface of a cryptic dramatic theme.
What was the point of Cléo from 5 to 7?
Cleo from 5 to 7 tells the story of a young female singer who changes her self-perception in the course of a fateful afternoon. As Cleo fearfully awaits the results of a biopsy, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Tired of being reduced to her charm and beauty, Cleo makes a significant transition.
What is the framing in Cléo from 5 to 7?
By physically framing Cléo in mirrors placed deliberately throughout the film, Varda engineers the audience's perspective so that it is Cléo's. She uses the visual symbolism of a mirror to indicate the way in which Cléo sees herself – that is, through a patriarchal gaze which gradually deteriorates.
What is the mise
The mise-en-scene of the film as a whole is very natural. The viewer sees Cléo in a natural light as she goes through her day. Paris is shown as it would have been because it was filmed on location. The hustle and bustle of the time is shown as it realistically would have been at the time.
Who are the cameos in Cléo from 5 to 7?
Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina, Emilienne Caille, Eddie Constantine, Sami Frey, Danièle Delorme, Yves Robert, Alan Scott, Georges de Beauregard and Jean-Claude Brialy all make uncredited cameo appearances as the actors in the silent film shown to Cléo and her friend.