“when i choose to see the good side of things, i'm not being naive. it is strategic and necessary. it's how I've learned to survive through everything”
Agnès Varda on the mystery of 'La Pointe Courte' (1955):
"There’s a mystery to 'La Pointe Courte' (1955) that I’ve never been able explain: whatever drove me to make a film? I knew nothing about the cinema, first of all because I never went to the movies; by the age of twenty I’d only seen a maximum of about twenty films. Nor did I live among people who were in any way involved in film.
I really believe that I undertook La Pointe Courte the way you write your first novel, not caring whether it will be published or not. Of course I was an avid reader at that time so you can discern the imprint of literature in my film: the film was directly inspired by Faulkner’s 'Wild Palms'. Not in its story line but in the way it’s constructed: you know, the way it alternates between the story of the couple and the rising waters of the Mississippi.
I loved this feeling of suspension, somewhat annoying as you’re reading but which feels quite extraordinary in retrospect. In France it was a time when we were beginning to talk a lot about Brecht’s theory of distanciation. I hadn’t yet read any theoretical writings on this but I was fascinated by this attempt to interfere with the spectator’s identification with the film’s characters."
(Agnès Varda's interview with Jean-Andre Fieschi & Claude Ollier, 1965)
P.S: Remembering the great Agnès Varda on her 98th birthday!