Audio transcription

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse and Le bonheur introductions and post-screening discussions with David Pendleton, Haden Guest and Agnès Varda. Sunday March 15, 2009.

DAVID PENDLETON  0:00  

For those who don't know me, my name is David Pendleton. I'm the programmer here at the Harvard Film Archive and I'm here to welcome you all to the screening of The Gleaners and I on the penultimate evening of our Agnès Varda retrospective. 

Just a couple of notes about upcoming events. Next weekend, the Archive is taking a spring break. We have the next weekend off to recover from this amazing weekend. I mean, we knew that Varda was popular and a force to be reckoned with and an important figure, but my hat’s off to all of you for filling the house again and again this weekend. Please keep it up! We'll be resting next weekend to get ready for our next major program, which is a joint retrospective honoring the work of Kiju Yoshida and Mariko Okada, a filmmaker and an actress. This will be the first major Yoshida retrospective that focuses on his work with his partner Mariko Okada as his leading actress. And it's worth pointing out as well that Okada is a famous actress in her own right having worked with a number of the postwar greats in Japanese cinema, particularly Ozu and Naruse, and we will have a special evening during that program: besides screening Yoshida’s masterpieces such as The Affair at Akitsu and Eros + Massacre, we’ll have an evening featuring Yoshida’s rarely seen documentary on Ozu plus an Ozu film that Okada stars in.

The program that we are currently enjoying is meant to coincide with the first gallery installation by Agnès Varda, her work Les veuves de Noirmoutier, which is visible upstairs in the Sert Gallery on the third floor through April 12. A program like this requires the work of a number of different organizations, and I want to give some brief thanks, first of all to Rosalie Varda and Ciné Tamaris–that is, Madame Varda’s production company—also to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the French Consulate here in Boston and their team of Eric Jausseran, Brigitte Bouvier, the cultural attache, and the consulate himself, François Gauthier. And I also want to give thanks to the Harvard Department of Visual and Environmental Studies and especially there Dominique Blüher. Madame Varda is not here to introduce the film, but she will be here at the end to answer your questions about the film. As those of you might know who’ve seen her at other times, Q&A is her preferred format, and she's a master at it. So stick around afterwards. I should also mention, if you're interested in seeing Happiness, or Le bonheur, the second film this evening, there is a separate admission so we will be clearing the theater after the Q&A. However, if you wish to see that film, you're welcome to leave a jacket or belongings at your seat if you want to save a seat when you go out to buy the ticket. 

And so onto the show. The Gleaners and I is probably Agnès Varda’s best-known film in this country, or one of them, one that served as a reminder, particularly to audiences in this country, that Varda was not only still active as a filmmaker, but that she was somebody who's particularly interested in nonfiction cinema and in the personal essay. Before the release of The Gleaners and I in 2001, Varda was probably best known in this country for making a series of fictional feature films, from Cléo from 5 to 7 to Vagabond, with Le bonheur in between. And after the success of Vagabond she actually spent most of the decade of the 1990s making films about film and about cinema, partially in response to the death of her companion Jacques Demy in 1990. So she spent the last decade of the century making films about his work, about his life, about cinema in general. And she also spent a lot of time and energy restoring and releasing his films. 

If, like me, you discovered films by Demy like Lola and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg in the 1990s, you have Agnès Varda to thank for that as well. But at the turn of the millennium, she turned her attention outward once again and also turned to digital filmmaking, returning to filming in the streets—and in this case in the fields as well, taking the topic of gleaning as her subject but all the while mixing in, as she does, personal essay, even some fictional elements (some slightly fictional elements), and certainly her interest in aesthetics and particularly painting. The film returns again and again to paintings of gleaners by Jean-François Millet and Jules Breton. And as well, the film manifests her fascination with various kinds of marginality and subculturality, attention to popular life or life in the streets as we've seen in Daguerréotypes, the lives of the poor as in the short L’opéra mouffe, the marginal as in Vagabond, the subcultural as in Murs murs, and the countercultural as in Lions Love, which we saw last night. The film was a remarkable success not only in France but around the world and prompted a sequel. And one might argue that today the film is as timely as ever given current economic situations, and a certain attention to dumpster diving or food recovery as a sort of a mixture of Green politics, anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist tactics, and even a sort of anarchism. But above all, the film reminds us of Varda’s ability to use cinema, both to move us and to participate in the social reality around her. So with that, we'll go into the screening of The Gleaners and I, and we'll be back afterwards to have a Q&A with Agnès Varda. Let me also remind you to please turn off any cell phones, anything else that makes noise or casts light. And with that said, enjoy the film. Thanks. 

[APPLAUSE] 

DAVID PENDLETON  6:19
Do you want some water?

AGNÈS VARDA  6:26  

[INAUDIBLE] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

DAVID PENDLETON  6:27
Shall I pour you some?

AGNÈS VARDA  6:30

Now for this film, each time people applaud, I always think they are applauding the people in the film, even though... even if I made the film, okay, I did the editing, okay, you are applauding the people because that's a real documentary. They exist. They spoke to me. They were confident—they told me a lot of things. They gave their ideas about society. They are very real persons. And so I take the applause for them too.

DAVID PENDLETON  7:05  

And yet at the same time, the film relies so much upon your editing and first of all, your ability to find these people, second of all, your ability to present them to us in a certain sequence and to present other things in between the sequences that make the film such a satisfying whole. I mean, I'm wondering, to what extent did the structure of the film...  was that something that you had in mind all along and how did you become interested in the subject? Or did the film sort of grow organically as you got into the subject and started meeting the people involved?

AGNÈS VARDA  7:37  

Well, what started the film was really that one day I was at the end of a market like around 2pm and maybe I was having a coffee somewhere, and I could see these people coming after the market in that very short time between the end of the people packing in their trucks and the cleaners with their brooms. There was like twenty minutes where things were on the floor. And I could see the people coming and picking. So I started to investigate about other markets in Paris. Then I start to question about the gleaning itself. And I checked the dictionary like I do in the film. And it's clearly to pick something that other people have abandoned. If you go to the flea market, you don't glean you know, you buy or you look, you try to have good deals, but gleaning is really picking something that is lost, is abandoned. So, the way with gleaners.

I start to investigate what are the food in the fields that they take and glean because I remember a TV show in which the man was showing his beautiful machine as property, the machine that cuts the wheat and puts it in the thing, and they do the “eh” [SOUND OF WORK], and they do the grain, I mean, and they do bread you know, it's so sophisticated. So, the man was saying we don't lose a grain; we lose nothing. One year, the machine was not well-adapted, we would lose one grain by [FRENCH WORD], and we lost money. And I thought, well, no, but the thing is left for the gleaners. And when, years ago, centuries ago, it was mostly the wheat that was gleaned—to get wheat, to do wheat, to do bread. So I started to go around, ask about apples, etc., and I understood potatoes was a big deal because of the format. So the whole thing... with a little investigation, I decided to make the film, had some difficulties to find the money, like usual, as usual, and I couldn't really wait for the money because you know, in the field they don't wait for the time for the apples, the time for the potatoes. You can’t just say, hey wait because I'm looking for the money. [LAUGHTER]

So I started to shoot before having even made a deal to. And among other things it was I couldn't get Canal+, which is a paying channel, to... The girls running the documentary department said, “Why, it's difficult, the boss will never accept that. It's not a good subject.”  I said, “Yes, it’s a good subject.” They said, “Well convince him yourself.” So I take an appointment, he says, “Okay in two weeks or something.” Meanwhile, I do the potatoes. And I was lucky really that the second day of shooting in the fields of potatoes, that man said, Oh, those are the monsters, we throw them away. And I found these heart-shaped potatoes. And I thought, well, that's a sign you know, that's a sign that that's where we go, that's where I go. The gleaning is related to affection, to warmth, to... because you know the people between themselves have done that. And when I had that appointment, I came in that office of the boss of Canal+, I had a heart-shaped potato in my hand, and I say, “That potato and me would like to make a film.” [LAUGHTER] And he laughs like you did, and he said, “What's the story?” And I say, “Well, I brought a documentary subject—it's about potatoes. Can you believe this? And it's about apples and…” And he said, “Okay, yes, we do it, we do it!”

So that's how I got the first deal. Just to say that, I was very concerned, you asked me about, about that fact of gleaning. And that people in the markets, they really pick everything on the floor. And the subject is really: these people eat what we throw away. That's what I felt strongly. Now on the way, on the way, because I love to film, because I'm not a social worker. I'm not a social, you know, [UNKNOWN]. I'm not géographie or economiste. So on the way I film other things. Like I met a red cabbage. I found it beautiful, I filmed it. Or one man was the family of, uh, what’s his name? Oh, l’inventeur de la photographie…  Not Méliès, the other one....

DAVID PENDLETON  12:18

Marey.

AGNÈS VARDA    

One man was from the family of Marey. Just at that time, there was an exhibition about Marey, okay? I took the opportunity to show the wonderful Marey inventions. So, this is a free documentary in which the person Agnès exists while she does a documentary about the gleaners. Not that I wanted to speak so much about me, but about things I meet, I can grab... and same thing in the last film I made. So it is structured, it is planned. But when you make a documentary, not only you meet people, that makes you meet people, you know, I knew two or three of them; I ended up meeting thirty of them. Somebody who told me about this and the one that was saying, Oh I know somebody, I know that black man who’s living with a Vietnamese, and we went there and they were nice. They say, “Oh, we pick all the chicken left in the market, I cook them for the whole neighborhood.” It was all these things that I learned through one person sending to another person, you know, you have to be open to discoveries and stories. So then the last structure is in the editing obviously because then you have that material. And I wrote down whatever they had said, I would write it down, choose the best lines. I mean, do my best so they would look like what they are. But you know some time when they speak they repeat, they do things. I would keep the best of what they said, edit according to the words so to make them appear very clearly concerned, which they are. But sometimes their words go, you know, up and down, and sometimes I had a one-hour discussion with somebody, which ended up like two or three minutes. So there is a lot of work of attention to what they said, and then trying to use all the sights: shots about trees, about my cats, about my ceiling, because this is part of the life I had at that time. 

And so that's how I built the editing. It took me a certain time, and at some point, some scenes were missing, we went back to shoot again. So that's how the film was little by little structured and ended up, you know, 80 minutes. And it came out in theaters, and it did well. It was very well-received especially by young people because it's the time where... you know, this is in 2000. That was the beginning of realizing how much waste there is, how much stupid waste is everywhere. And how much we followed those things, you know: Not good after the ninth of March. Okay, smell it, taste it, you don't have to just look at the thing. A lot of things came up to the minds of people say, Okay, well maybe we could exercise our tastes, our ideas, our….  Because it's done to do, you know, trade and trade and trade.

So a lot of things came out that interest people because it was a time for ecological concern and things about the food, things about the waste, and it's getting worse and worse now, you know, but this is in 2000, and it came out I think at the right moment. People had not exactly realized how much, how many people needed... a new way of eating. So it's between construction, editing and meaningful thoughts. Also the freedom of showing other things not to make it, you know, heavy or... I didn't want to make it, Okay, be careful about this and that, because filming is a nice way of existing. That pleasure of filming would be going through to escape the subject sometimes. And to come back to it, that was marvelous.

DAVID PENDLETON  16:20  

Yes. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

AGNÈS VARDA  16:22

Maybe you have questions in the audience...

DAVID PENDLETON   16:24  

Are questions out there in the audience? Does anybody want to be the first brave person? If not, I've got a couple more warmups lined up. But we'll go ahead and throw it out democratically, if somebody will raise their hand. There's a gentleman right here. Please wait for the audience mic.

AGNÈS VARDA 16:36  

One hand, one hand.

AUDIENCE  16:40  

Hi, the scene in the café where you come back to it, I think three times with the café owner and her son and the men talking about the definition of gleaning. Was that filmed on your street in Paris?

AGNÈS VARDA 16:51  

I didn’t understand. What café? I didn’t hear.

AUDIENCE  16:54  

The café owner, the woman who runs a café and there are men at the bar talking.

AGNÈS VARDA  16:58  

Yes. Well, you know, that was... We were looking for a place to sleep because we were... We had an appointment in many places in France but one or two appointments, not more. And each time we needed more. So somebody told me, go to that café. She knows everybody around. So we came to see her at... There must be two scenes in her café, no?

DAVID PENDLETON   17:22  

It’s where they explain the difference between gleaning and picking.

AGNÈS VARDA  17:25  

Yes.

DAVID PENDLETON   17:26

That’s not in Paris.

AGNÈS VARDA  17:28

Oh no, it's en Provence; it’s near Arles, Saint Remy-en-Provence. And again, that woman gave us keys, made us meet other people. You know, we were always keeping curious, keeping looking for other people gleaning, and she explained really, like getting mushrooms is not gleaning, it’s just getting to mushrooms and picking them. So we wanted to be very precise, and she was very precise about l’année and what grows up and what comes out. I mean, it's really nice. And, it's a woman we met in a café. Is this something I... was it a question or just…?

AUDIENCE 18:11  

I was wondering if that came early in your filming and set up other things because they helped define some terms for you, and they're very playful.

AGNÈS VARDA  18:19  

She helped, you know, but we didn't know her the day before. [LAUGHTER]

DAVID PENDLETON  18:26  

But actually it seemed like there's almost an educational aspect in some ways to the film. I mean, you bring in people to explain the laws, the ways in which gleaning is legal and not legal. Which leads me to wonder if there's not almost an activist aspect to the film itself.

AGNÈS VARDA  18:38  

But you understand, to explain what is law, that was my pleasure. We have a fable de La Fontaine, famous fable de La Fontaine, qui s’appelle, Le rat de ville et le rat des champs, “The Rat from the City and the Rat from the Fields.” [LAUGHTER]

DAVID PENDLETON  18:53  

“The City Mouse and the Country Mouse”

AGNÈS VARDA  18:54

Eh?

DAVID PENDLETON  18:55 

We have “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse”

AGNÈS VARDA  18:57  

Okay. So I thought I have to have a lawyer in the country, a lawyer in town. [LAUGHTER] So I ask a lawyer I knew in Avignon and I say, “Can you come with your dress, your official dress?” And there was a field of cabbage, you know. And I say, “Can you be there in the middle?” And he was very nice. He came and he explained because they know the law, they know the red book, Le Code civil. You know, they knew it. But I needed somebody in the city so I asked another lawyer. I didn't know her too well. And she said, “Well, I don't know if we're allowed to wear that... that official lawyer dress out of court.” I said, “Well, nobody will see you, come, come, come... Nobody will see you, but we will see you in the film.” And then she said,” Okay, okay.” No, but nobody from the court came to judge them. But that again, it's a little joke about Le rat des champs, le rat de ville. But I wanted to see if the information was different. It is different in the fields because of the surveys and the thing about... And in the bonus, I made for the DVD (I made a bonus). And I even made another film called Two Years Later because I went back...

DAVID PENDLETON  20:12

It’s a sequel.

AGNÈS VARDA  20:13

It's a sequel to it. But when I did the investigation, the law has been changing all the time. There was a time when only women and children could glean. And there was another law that it in any way couldn't be before the sunrise and after the sunset. No way. At some point only the poor could glean. And they had to prove that they were poor. And they needed a certificate from the priest, le curé, and from a notaire and from a rich person in the village. [LAUGHTER] At another point…  it's interesting because there had been a story of the law about gleaning all over the centuries, you know. And at the time when we made the film, the lawyer explained that, if it's down, if it's abandoned, when you touch it, you become the owner. I don't remember the name in Latin. I don't remember the name. It's a Latin word. So it's interesting, not that I want to be pédagogique or educational, but it's interesting to know what and what. I went to Canada, and they never heard about that. They don't glean there, that’s what they told me. I don't know if there is gleaning around here. I don't even know.                                                                                     

DAVID PENDLETON  21:37  

Yeah, somebody want to explain about whether there's gleaning around here or not? Who wants to raise their hand and talk into a microphone so we can all hear because it is something that you hear more and more about as a sort of anti-corporate or anti-consumers practice.

AUDIENCE  21:52  

I'm just thinking, I found it really interesting. The fact that even though it's private property in France, there are laws that protect people to be able to go onto... I'm sure that that wouldn't be allowed here at all because... just private property, you just can’t do that.

AGNÈS VARDA  22:15  

Well, the property comes also in the law because if the fields are open, you can do it. But if there is a fence you cannot. Again, it’s very precise, you know, but in the market... you don't have so many markets in squares, do you?

DAVID PENDLETON  22:33  

Not that kind of markets, but there are supermarkets with...

AGNÈS VARDA  22:35  

But supermarket is different, you know, because it's a closed place. It's a property place, you know?

DAVID PENDLETON 

There are farmer’s markets...

AUDIENCE  22:41

[INAUDIBLE]

AGNÈS VARDA  22:44

Pardon?

DAVID PENDLETON 24:46
Apparently there’s another sale… vente au commencement de l’année ou les autres choses vont… c’est les étudiants qui..

AGNÈS VARDA 24:57
If they leave it for the new students coming, that's another point.

DAVID PENDLETON 25:03
Supposedly… Are there any other questions about the film?

AUDIENCE 25:12
I just wondered if the people who you filmed in the documentary ever saw the documentary and what their reaction was, maybe you could tell us a little bit about that.

AGNÈS VARDA 25:23
First, you know, I made the film at the right moment for me, because I had just discovered the use of small cameras, as I said in the film, and not only is it more easy, it’s more light, it’s lighter. But in many cases, these people were fragile, socially fragile, and I was glad I was alone with them, especially the man there, the last one that I found extraordinary. The one who eats salad
directly off the floor, who is vegetarian, who finds the bread and picks the best bread, you know, you've seen. It took me a certain time just to speak to him. I’ve filmed him alone with my camera, you know, and I filmed him two, three, four times before we spoke about parsley, you know, that's how we started the conversation. When I found out it was at night, I said, “What do you do? You have a TV set?” And he said, “No, no, no, I teach.” “Oh, what do you teach? Would you allow me to, to film that?” Then I asked him if I could bring a camera... (I’m so mad because I couldn't do that alone, you know, three, four people speaking, learning, etc.) So that man, this is an example since he's always at the Gare Montparnasse, it was easy to invite him to see the
film when it played. And I even asked him sometimes to introduce the film. And I asked the theater who’d asked him to come to give him a salary, to respect his work, and he got a salary to not only speak about the film that he didn't care too much about, but about the hunger in the world, and all problems that he had in mind besides my film. Now in the sequel... I will come
back to that. So we try to screen the film for everybody. Some people don't even go to theaters, where we try to find out what and what. We sent cassettes to the Red Cross and to the Restaurants du Coeur in some cities like Saint-Lys, like Étampes, and told the people that they could come and see the film if they drop by there. One was sick, we understood they were in a hospital. We sent the cassette to those. I did my best so they would see the film and discuss it eventually. Now, when I did the sequel, that was about finding them again, two years after: what happened to them. And some were better, some were worse, and I felt like in documentaries that had been
around, with The Gleaners , everywhere in the world, I could not just, you know, say these people exist, and then they don't exist any longer. So I took another time to make another film about them. And when I went to the man selling the papers at the Gare Montparnasse, there was filming and I say, “Okay, you saw the film, you introduced the film many times. So tell me,
what do you think about the film?” And he said, “Well, as a documentary it’s not bad, but you are totally unnecessary in the film.” [LAUGHTER] And I say “Fine. Do I disturb the film?” And he said, “Well you know, who cares about your old age?” [LAUGHTER] At that time a woman passes by that I don't know who said “No, you're wrong. She's not too much in the film. She tries
to do her job.” It was very nice because it, again, it's something you capture if you have the mindand the technique of a documentariste . I capture both his words and the woman passing by I never met, before and after.
So it's interesting. Some of them, like another of the women, the woman who was in the trailer. Once I meet her by chance, and the shot is out of focus; the minute I focus on her I recognize her, so I jump on her, we kiss, I say, “Oh, I haven't seen you for two years, how are you?” And this is the one... remember her in the trailer? Sort of, you know, not good-looking but... tired.
And [she] says, “Well, I'm better. I’m in love.” “Oh,” I say “It's wonderful. How is the love going?” “Oh, it's fine; I see him every week and it's a beautiful love for me.” And I said, “Did that change your life?” I said. “Well, I drink less.” “Oh, so what?” She said, “Well, from twelve liters of rosé, I went down to two litres per day.”

[LAUGHTER]

That was incredible because you know... and she felt better. It was interesting. So, you know, these people had seen the film. And I said to her, “Remember in the film that you saw that I made, I cut a scene in which you were so drunk you were screaming ‘Get away! Get away!’” you know. One day I came and [she] said “You should not have cut it.” “Well,” I said, “I didn't want you to look like…” She said, “You should show it. Put it in your sequel because people should understand because we drink, because we lack money, we lack affection, we lack understanding.”

So I did put it into this film because you know it's interesting that they really have feelings. Okay, they are sometimes stupid, violent, they choose to cut themselves, to steel themselves to each other (They “steel” each other? Comment you say?) But in a way they are a community with good will, and I mean it’s not only that they lack to eat, there is nothing missing to eat—they need to speak, they need to express themselves. And that's why I was glad with that little camera sometimes alone, sometimes with a very light crew of three people, I could give them the opportunity to say something that they wanted to say like the one who says, “You know, why did the mayor gave us that place we can stay with the trailers, and now he wants us to go? You have to tell the mayor…” And I understood that was important for her to say so, and that would be in a film. But I tell you, I went two years after. The mayor had put them out anyway, you know. We don't have an effect on anybody, you know, they don't care. So it was for me a real experience. And that's why I didn't want to stop it just with one film which was successful in terms of understanding. That's why I made a sequel which is one hour long. And some of them had disappeared. I found one in the middle of France. We drove until somewhere we... somebody told me it was there. And it was interesting. And the film contains also the reactions to the film, the letters I received, the strange things I received. And even now, eight years after, sometimes I find in my mailbox, a heart-shaped potato.

[LAUGHTER]

This is true, people send them to me in envelopes, in boxes with some, you know... Somebody did, comment dit, like a tapestry of The Gleaners, the famous Millet gleaners; some other people buy little gleaners with cups and
stuff, you know, like little stupid things. They buy it in the flea market. They bring it to me. I've been totally rewarded by the understanding of the audience and the desire to finally make jokes about the gleaning from the Millet famous painting, has been in all farms everywhere, it was a famous painting, two paintings, Les glaneuses et L’Angélus. And in most of the farms in the
beginning of the century, you have that in the kitchen. So it has appeared as an iconographie in many, many things: plates, you know, ashtrays, boxes, tapestry, and... I don't know, wooden painting, etc. So it became obvious that I had to receive all these things. I have a full trunk of...the gleaner things, you know, that was sent to me and I tried to always write back and say, “Thank you,” etc, etc. So it's interesting that it was not just one shot in in 2000, you know, it took me until 2003 with this amount of information and the desire to share that situation and make it understandable and quite clear and quite, I hope, efficient, so that people have a different behavior, and I heard many people say that they speak to their children, they explain something, that just to say hello to the man who does the garbage. You know, because I say that in the film, I said, “Did you tell your children to say hello?” And now some children go out and say, “Hello, and thank you for taking the garbage,” you know? Or looking at the... so the paquet, the dates of… last date of eating, how do you call that?

DAVID PENDLETON 34:35
Expiration date

AGNÈS VARDA 34:36
Expiration date, looking at that, and then say, “okay,” yes or no, we have to think about it. So it's interesting because when a film, a simple documentary, can in a way affect reflection…behavioral understanding. I felt very rewarded. It became a real subject that is beyond the film, beyond my work. II felt very rewarded by that…

DAVID PENDLETON 35:06
Question up here in the front. If you want to hang on and just wait for the microphone.

AUDIENCE 35:13
Do you feel the digital technology... you mentioned in the film the smallness gave you—compared, I mean… You made such beautiful films, traditional film, 35mm. This had a big effect on your ability... the interviews seemed very natural... to step up to people?

AGNÈS VARDA 35:33
Sure, sure. It makes a big difference, you know, because you have a camera that’s not bigger than that. You say, “Well, can I speak to you?” They don't feel that it's... The system of even television, come with huge things and say, okay, “Have you seen the fire?” “Yes, I saw the fire.”

[LAUGHTER]

Okay. You know, this is more “Can I speak to you? I need you because I do a
documentary. I need people who say what and what. Let’s take the time, let’s speak.” Sometimes I don't even film at the beginning. I say “Can I take the camera now?” And it makes a different social relationship. And these little cameras allow that. Now, when I went with others, you know, like when we filmed the lesson, the teaching, the other one comes with a big camera and so on. But they're prepared. They have been asked if they could do that, and I try to make them understand when I do a documentary that I need them, that they're helping me and they're helping me to treat a subject that I find interesting and maybe interests them too. So that made a big difference.

And I don't know if you have seen the installation which is upstairs in the gallery, there is an installation I made. Has somebody seen the installation yet? Yes, some. Okay, so it's about widows in the island of Noirmoutier. And in that installation, you have the two systems. The middle screen is a 35mm
film, classical. You know, it's one scene with these widows around a table. But the other interviews were made about these widows. Again, I tried to be alone with the small camera, alone or almost alone. So, to make them feel that I am the widow, they are widows, maybe we could speak, I could get their feelings, their understanding. So, you know, nothing is important in terms of technique, but it is because sometimes the medium is the message but sometimes the technique is the understanding, sometimes the tool brings…intimacy… intimacy, is that the word...? Eh? Well, intimité.

DAVID PENDLETON 37:47
Oh, intimacy!

AGNÈS VARDA 37:53
Intimacy!

[LAUGHTER]

So, saying that it is... you have to always be at the service of your subject. So the tools are to be chosen according to what you feel, what you want to achieve, to whom you speak, when and what. And so I can go from 35 to 16 millimeter. But that show upstairs, it's very clear about that. You can understand that the widows I spoke with, I would not have gotten their words, if I was not alone with them. It's almost understandable when you see, no? Did you see it?

[LAUGHTER]

DAVID PENDLETON 38:32
Oh yes, yes, I have.

[LAUGHTER]

DAVID PENDLETON 38:38
Alright, we have time for one more very quick question. Okay.

AUDIENCE 38:44
I loved the music in the film and the way it fit with the images. And I loved sometimes where there was a little humor in the music and I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how you worked with your composer to achieve that?

AGNÈS VARDA 38:57
Well, I have two reasons: one, the classical composition, is by a woman called Joanna Bruzdowicz. She came from Poland. She's a very serious composer. She did the score for Vagabond. And I asked her for [it to be] kind of fast. But also because of the social issues, and the rebellion in a way, I thought I should have a rap song, so...

DAVID PENDLETON 39:24
Is that you rapping?

AGNÈS VARDA 39:26
So at the beginning, it's not me, then it's me. Because at the beginning, I asked… there were two men and a woman. They were usually singing together—singing?—rapping together. So I gave them the words that they had to say. One of them decided he hated my words. So he started a poetry about the streets. I say, Well, wait, well calm down because this is a subject we have to treat. We want to say that it's not fair that people eat and others don’t. Okay, so one of them quit. The second one...

[LAUGHTER]

the second one was okay. (They were paid, the three of them.) The second one was okay, did work. And there was a woman called also Agnès, Princesse Agnès. And she did the words that I’d written, she's okay. In the sequel we see them more. So she did the words, it was fine. Then there was a third session planned and paid. And she didn't show up. So I had the words about the TV and about all the objects… Then I decided to rap myself like, I knew the words and I did the end of the rap. More or less okay, but I think rap is the exact shape, shape of music that corresponds to being angry at society. I thought it was okay. And so you have two musics in the film.

DAVID PENDLETON 40:55
Thank you very much, Agnès. [APPLAUSE]

AGNÈS VARDA 40:57
Thank you to all of you.

DAVID PENDLETON 41:07
One more… Would you like to just have a seat in the front here?

AGNÈS VARDA 41:13
Thank you! Thank you very much... Are some of you staying or what is it, is there another show?

DAVID PENDLETON 41:32
They can come back but first they have to go outside.

AGNÈS VARDA 41:34
Wow, you have to clean the room.

DAVID PENDLETON 41:36
That's right.

AGNÈS VARDA
Clear the room.

DAVID PENDLETON 41:37
That’s right. Glean the room.

AGNÈS VARDA 41:40
“Clear,” I said. Ça va, ça va? Well because it's a very… it's a very interesting subject, you see how people get involved, don’t you see how people get involved?

[INAUDIBLE CHATTER]

DAVID PENDLETON 42:01
I felt like we just scratched the surface. That film is so rich.

HADEN GUEST 42:48
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Harvard Film Archive here for this very special screening of Le bonheur. Agnès Varda will not be joining us for Q&A after the film so we're gonna have a little conversation beforehand. Before getting into that I just would like to thank various individuals and institutions that made this evening and this entire series possible. Beginning with a woman sitting in the middle, a very close friend of ours sitting in the middle of theater, Brigitte Bouvier from the French Consulate here in Boston. Let's give her a round of applause.

[APPLAUSE]

It's always a pleasure to work with our friends at the French Consulate. I'd also like to thank Ciné Tamaris, Agnès’s own company, who were extraordinarily cooperative and generous. And I'd also like to thank the Visual and Environmental Studies Department. On the third floor of this building in the Sert Gallery—this building being the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts—there is indeed a really marvelous work of visual art and this is a video installation by Agnès Varda. Varda is not only an accomplished filmmaker, she's also a marvelous installation conceptual artist. And so I encourage you to see this piece. This is the first major installation piece of Varda’s in the United States, it’s called Les veuves de Noirmoutiers , The Widows of
Noirmoutiers , and it's up through mid-April. But now let's talk a bit about Le bonheur. This is your third feature, Agnès. You did something quite unusual. This was a film that caused quite a bit of controversy. It elicited quite different, I think, reactions from critics and and from audiences. And it's a film that… Structure is very important to your films, and your first two features have a very clear and careful structure. It seems though in Le bonheur , you go to a
furthest extreme in just carefully planning and structuring this film. And the thing is also the tone and mood is quite different. I'm wondering if you could talk about the differences with this film and how it came about.

AGNÈS VARDA 45:09
Well, it's, you know… sometimes... it's interesting. I wanted to make another film, I had written a film. And I couldn't find the money, all the subsidies we asked for... et cetera. And I got mad. I said, “Okay, I should make another film fast.” And I wrote Le bonheur very fast, like out of the blue. Just a story like that. A story that I was interested in, which is that happiness and you’ll
see, there are some conditions of happiness. A young man, his young wife, good health, beautiful, two kids, beautiful. They are simple, they work. He works with his uncle. He has a good job, working on wood… un menuisier, a carpenter, and he doesn't need a fridge, he doesn't need a car, the uncle lends the car—lends? prête—lends the car on Sunday. He goes, picnics. So it was a kind of cliché. It's a cliché, nice, happy family. She's a seamstress (is that a word?), and she does weddings, dresses, and he does the toys for his kids. I mean, it's a perfect little family. Then you'll see what happens. And the way I try to make it the contrary of Cléo where I was investigating the time and duration in a very strict construction, not like La pointe courte , which obviously has a very strict construction. This is a simple story in which I did follow the story, like many of the films, in the films we see sometimes, at the beginning it goes like this, there is something happening, then that, then an end. So I did two or three films actually, like Kung-fu Master. Some of you have seen it or will see it. It’s these, I would say, simple films. Now what happened is that I had done a short in color, but I've never made a feature in color. And I thought that Happiness could be related to the Impressionist painters. Since we were shooting in the... what you call Ile de France , which is a country around Paris, I really, quote comment dit, je [sais] pas . I took my
visual ideas from Impressionist painters, and trying to have [UNKNOWN] palette. Sometimes I would choose, you know, yellow, blue, purple, or green, some very precise choices of color to match one sequence or another. There's one sequence very red. I worked on the color. I worked on the warmth of color or the coolness of color. And I also work on one simple, very cruel idea that’s: everybody is unique, but replaceable. And nobody likes to hear that. Not even me. So I'm saying I was working on something in which society goes, if it goes, you know, society needs families, needs family going. It means work, care of the children, peace, you know, like being adapted to society. And this is about that. It's [RECORDING SILENT] very agreeable to watch, because see, I filmed it very nicely, I would say, but for me it's like a beautiful fruit. Colorful, beautiful summer fruit. But inside there is a worm. That's more or less what I have in mind about the film. So for that story I asked a man who was a star in TV, he was playing in a Middle Ages series called Thierry la Fronde. And he was tall, beautiful, young, strong. And I asked him to do the film with his very wife, his own wife and their own children because I thought would be more easy to help them feel, behave like not only it is a story, it is made up, but they would be more at ease and so they accepted so that TV hero was a famous actor but the wife is just simple wife never became an actor after, and she's wonderful. For me, she's wonderful. And then there is another woman who was a young actress starting to act, beautiful also. And it goes you know, here are these two blondes are differently beautiful. So for that case, I chose Mozart, because I thought that Mozart has that incredible quality you feel it's wonderful to listen, you feel happiness in listening, but there is something sometimes, especially in the last five years of Mozart, something that... I don't know, that you feel excited, you feel something bad is arriving. I don't know. I felt that. So I use a Mozart, you know, un quintet and then grande fugue, prélude et fugue . So I organize things that I would serve that strange, fake, beautiful happy-ending film. What can I say? That's it.

HADEN GUEST 51:31
The films have often been read as a critique of the emerging counterculture. Is this something that you agree with at all?

AGNÈS VARDA 51:40
Nothing to do with culture. For me, it has to do with love and that nature is bigger than what we think and that the desire of loving, the desire of love is natural to everybody. So it's only society that organizes the love and the way we use love, the way that we organize love, but it is natural to desire. So, the point is what do we do with that? At what point you have to find yourself, not
immorality, but immoral to be able to live. So it has nothing to do with counterculture. It's a subject all like the world, you know, that society needs rules, and desire and love have no rules. So what do you do with that? How do you manage that?

HADEN GUEST 52:33
Great. And with that we turn it over—Actually, we're not going to be taking any questions from the audience because we need to get started.

AGNÈS VARDA 52:39
[INAUDIBLE] here after presenting so many films, I feel my roots are now. I think I may maybe stay here until tomorrow until the day after, you know. [LAUGHTER] Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

HADEN GUEST 52:53
But Agnès will in fact be here tomorrow night for Sans toit ni loi, Vagabond, and the rarely screened Kung-fu Master. So please come back tomorrow night. Thank you very much.

[APPLAUSE]

AGNÈS VARDA 53:10
[INAUDIBLE]

HADEN GUEST 53:12
We'll close around six. So you could come, actually I...

AGNÈS VARDA 53:16
The exhibition closes at six and some people wish to come to the film at seven. You should keep the exhibition open when there is a film at seven.

[APPLAUSE]

HADEN GUEST 53:27
But the show is on until April 12 so you have plenty of opportunities to see it and I hope you will. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

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