Film Still

Le bonheur

Agnès Varda

France

1965

80 minutes

Color

1.66:1

French

420

Synopsis

Though married to the good-natured, beautiful Thérèse (Claire Drouot), young husband and father François (Jean-Claude Drouot) finds himself falling unquestioningly into an affair with an attractive postal worker. One of Agnès Varda’s most provocative films, Le bonheur examines, with a deceptively cheery palette and the spirited strains of Mozart, the ideas of fidelity and happiness in a modern, self-centered world.

Cast

FrançoisJean-Claude Drouot
ThereseClaire Drouot
EmilieMarie-Françoise Boyer

Credits

DirectorAgnès Varda
ScreenplayAgnès Varda
ProducerMag Bodard
CinematographyJean Rabier and Claude Beausoleil
EditingJanine Verneau

Disc Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Agnès Varda
  • The Two Women of “Le bonheur” (2006), a short piece featuring actors Claire Drouot and Marie-France Boyer
  • Thoughts on “Le bonheur” (2006), a discussion between four scholars and intellectuals discussing the concept of happiness and its relation to the film
  • Two short pieces by Varda investigating people’s idea of happiness
  • Jean-Claude Drouot Returns (2006), a featurette in which the actor revisits the film’s setting forty years later
  • Segment from the 1964 television program Démons et merveilles du cinéma, featuring footage of Varda shooting Le bonheur
  • Interview with Varda from 1998 about Le bonheur
  • Du Côté de la côte (1958), a short film by Varda exploring the tourist destination of the Côte d’Azur
  • Theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation

From the Current

AGNÈS’S SANDS OF TIME

Jul 2, 2009

This week, Agnès Varda’s beguiling new film, the autobiographical documentary The Beaches of Agnès, makes its U.S. premiere at New York’s Film Forum, and for the occasion A. O. Scott has profiled the indefatigable eighty-one...

Le bonheur: Splendor in the Grass

by Amy Taubin Jan 21, 2008

Few films have inspired as many wildly differing interpretations in the decades since their release as Agnès Varda’s 1964 Le bonheur (Happiness). Is it a pastoral? A social...

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DVD Box Set

4 Discs

SRP: $99.95

Criterion Store price

$79.96