73-74, 418-420 4 by Agnès Varda

[eez28]

So Cleo is going to have Les Fiancés du Pont Macdonald; is this the first time criterion has reused an extra from another disc?

[zedz]

Wonderful news. Cleo and Vagabond are two great films in the collection that seldom get the recognition they deserve (even from Criterion, with their formerly bare-bones editions), and I've wanted to see La Pointe Courte for years.

Isn't Les Fiances du Port Macdonald included in its entirety within Cleo? If it's also a separate feature on the disc, they're not just duplicating an extra from another release, but the content of the main feature from this one.

[denti alligator]

I hope that Cleo and Vagabond, along with the confirmed reissue of Salo, aren't the only reissues of 2008. I was really hoping for High and Low.

That said, I'm very thrilled about this release.

[Cronenfly]

Wonderful news. Cleo and Vagabond are two great films in the collection that seldom get the recognition they deserve (even from Criterion, with their formerly bare-bones editions), and I've wanted to see La Pointe Courte for years.

Isn't Les Fiances du Port Macdonald included in its entirety within Cleo? If it's also a separate feature on the disc, they're not just duplicating an extra from another release, but the content of the main feature from this one.

Can anyone who's a Varda fan (I'm thinking of you, zedz) give me some advice on how best to get into her work? I watched Vagabond a few years ago, but it left me a bit cold. Is there another, better work to start with, or are all of her movies of a similar bent?

[zedz]

Can anyone who's a Varda fan (I'm thinking of you, zedz) give me some advice on how best to get into her work? I watched Vagabond a few years ago, but it left me a bit cold. Is there another, better work to start with, or are all of her movies of a similar bent?

She's pretty diverse (I'm by no means an expert). Vagabond is in some ways a chilly work, being an intimate portrait told entirely in the remote third person, but I find it enormously moving. Several of her films play around with conventional movie identification: the supposed 'shallowness' of Cleo mentioned by several posters on this site, the widely misunderstood (at the time - and probably still, to some extent) Le Bonheur.

Formally, she can be an extremely playful filmmaker. This is apparent in the structural conceits of Cleo and Vagabond, but it's also important in her often reflexive documentary work. She's one of those major feature filmmakers who is probably equally important as a documentarist (like Herzog), and most of her best recent work has been in that vein. I don't know about availability in R1, but The Gleaners and I is terrific, and shows off her restless, associative intelligence to good effect, and the recent triptych CineVardoPhoto (or even just its modern panel, Ydessa, the Bears & etc.) is also excellent.

[Gropius]

This looks like it could be a really good set. Any speculations as to price?

[kinjitsu]

$99.95

[Matt]

This is the best birthday present since Les enfants du paradis!

[Cronenfly]

I never knew there was so much love out there for Varda...guess I have some catching up to do.

[drakula]

La Pointe-Courte!!!! What a beautiful movie! Thank heavens it's finally gonna be released

[malcolm1980]

I've seen and loved Cleo from 5 to 7 and Vagabond. How are the other two films in the box-set?

[Lemmy Caution]

I've only seen Cleo, Vagabond and Gleaners, so very much looking forward to the other two titles.

Via the Internet, I also watched a documentary Varda made about the Black Panthers. Interesting but the quality wasn't great. Available for viewing here

[backstreetsbackalright]

Super duper geeked for La Pointe-Courte! Never seen it, but I've always wanted to. This is one of those half-dozen titles I emailed Criterion about many, many times back in the day. Glad to finally have the opportunity to see if this film lives up to it's rep. And combined with a film so fascinating as Vagabond, this is a backstreetsboughtalright!

[Michael Kerpan]

I am so glad I put off buying Cleo and Vagabond. An absolute must-have set.

[Napoleon]

I am so glad I put off buying Cleo and Vagabond. An absolute must-have set.

Ditto. Cleo has been on the top of my wishlist for about 5 years but I've kept putting it off because of the transfer and a hunch that it would be re-done. Today that hunch finally pays off!

[Lemmy Caution]

Tonight I ran across what seemed a rather strange Varda title, Kung-fu Master (1987).
In French, it has a less surprising title: Le Petit Amour.
Unfortunately the Dvd I spotted was a Japanese edition without English subtitles.

It's a film about an older woman who falls for a young boy, featuring interesting casting choices:

Jane Birkin suggested a film in which a 40-year old woman would fall hopelessly in love with a teenage boy, suggesting herself and Mathieu Demy, Varda's and Jacques Demy's son, for the leading roles. The idea would develop into "Kung-Fu Master".

Mary-Jane (Birkin), 40, divorced, independent, living with her two daughters (her real-life daughters, 16-year-old Charlotte Gainsbourg and 5 year-old Lou Doillon), suddenly finds herself terribly attracted to one of her daughter's schoolmates, 14-year-old Julien (Mathieu Demy), and vice-versa.

Makes me realize how little I know of Varda's films, besides the highlights -- Cleo, Vagabond, Gleaners. Though I forgot that I've also seen her tribute to her late husband, The World of Jacques Demy.

Since I already have Cleo and Vagabond, I would have preferred an Eclipse release with the two early titles we are getting and a couple of her documentaries. But obviously a box set featuring Cleo is sexier and easier to market.

[criterionsnob]

I've kept putting it off because of the transfer and a hunch that it would be re-done.

Are we sure Vagabond and Cleo are new transfers? I know it says "new", but after a quick look on my old copy of Vagabond last night, the wording looked the same as what's currently on the website and neither say "high definition." Perhaps they're just adding new special features and using the old transfers. I'm going to email Mulvaney to confirm. I hope I'm wrong.

[skuhn8]

Are we sure Vagabond and Cleo are new transfers? I know it says "new", but after a quick look on my old copy of Vagabond last night, the wording looked the same as what's currently on the website and neither say "high definition." Perhaps they're just adding new special features and using the old transfers. I'm going to email Mulvaney to confirm. I hope I'm wrong.

You can bet they'll be new anamorphic transfers. I've never been so happy to double dip on a CC before this. Fantastic news.

[kinjitsu]

Are we sure Vagabond and Cleo are new transfers?

For all titles in this set:

• New restored digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Agnes Varda

[Matt]

As ecstatic as I am over this release, it's a shame they could not include Varda's short films (which are spectacular). Varda herself has recently released a2-disc set of them (with English subs).

[Gropius]

Varda herself has recently released a2-disc set of them (with English subs).

Didn't know about that. That set actually looks like a potentially better buy than this Criterion one.

[Matt]

Varda herself has recently released a2-disc set of them (with English subs).

Didn't know about that. That set actually looks like a potentially better buy than this Criterion one.

Complementary, I'd say. The only overlap is Les fiancés du Pont Mac Donald, and the four Criterion films are indispensable Varda.

[Gropius]

Complementary, I'd say. The only overlap is Les fiancés du Pont Mac Donald, and the four Criterion films are indispensable Varda.

Yes, they may be complementary, but I was thinking more about the likely price-to-number-of-rewatches ratio, which usually favours shorts collections over box sets of features.

[mogwai]

The only overlap is Les fiancés du Pont Mac Donald

L'opéra Mouffe and Du Côté de la côte are also included in the Criterion set. Still, though, that short film set certainly looks like it's worth getting. Thanks for the heads up, Matt. Didn't even know that had been released.

[Matt]

The only overlap is Les fiancés du Pont Mac Donald

L'opéra Mouffe and Du Côté de la côte are also included in the Criterion set.

Thanks for the correction. I missed Du Côté, and I wasn't sure if this garbled text meant that L'opéra Mouffe was in fact included:

Les Fiancés du Pont Macdonald (1961), a short film directed by Varda, featuring Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina, and Varda explaining why this film was featured as the film within the film L'opéra Mouffe (1958), an early short by Varda, with a score by Georges Delerue New and improved English subtitle translation

I thought maybe it was trying to say that Fiancés was the film within the film in L'opéra Mouffe, which is of course, nonsense. Didn't even think that it was mean to be an entry in the special features on its own.

The fact that more than just the one short is in the box makes me a little less hopeful for a Criterion edition of the short films collection.