Agnès Varda

Cléo from 5 to 7

Cléo from 5 to 7

Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer (Corinne Marchand) set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.

Film Info

  • France
  • 1962
  • 89 minutes
  • 1.66:1
  • French
  • Spine #73

Special Features

  • New, restored digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Agnès Varda
  • Remembrances (2005), a documentary on the making of the film, featuring interviews with Varda and actors Corinne Marchand and Antoine Bourseiller
  • Gallery of paintings by Hans Baldung Grien, whose work inspired the character of Cléo
  • Excerpt from a 1993 French television program featuring Madonna and Varda talking about the film
  • Cléo's Real Path Through Paris (2005), a short film retracing, on a motorcycle, Cléo's steps through Paris
  • Les fiancés du pont Macdonald (1962), a short film directed by Varda, featuring some of her new wave colleagues, with Varda explaining why the film was featured in Cléo
  • L’opéra Mouffe (1958), an early short by Varda, with a score by Georges Delerue
  • Theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A new essay by Adrian Martin and a written introduction by Agnès Varda

Available In

Collector's Set

4 by Agnès Varda

4 by Agnès Varda

DVD Box Set

4 Discs

$79.96

Collector's Set

The Complete Films of Agnès Varda

The Complete Films of Agnès Varda

Blu-ray Box Set

15 Discs

$199.96

Special Features

  • New, restored digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Agnès Varda
  • Remembrances (2005), a documentary on the making of the film, featuring interviews with Varda and actors Corinne Marchand and Antoine Bourseiller
  • Gallery of paintings by Hans Baldung Grien, whose work inspired the character of Cléo
  • Excerpt from a 1993 French television program featuring Madonna and Varda talking about the film
  • Cléo's Real Path Through Paris (2005), a short film retracing, on a motorcycle, Cléo's steps through Paris
  • Les fiancés du pont Macdonald (1962), a short film directed by Varda, featuring some of her new wave colleagues, with Varda explaining why the film was featured in Cléo
  • L’opéra Mouffe (1958), an early short by Varda, with a score by Georges Delerue
  • Theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A new essay by Adrian Martin and a written introduction by Agnès Varda
Cléo from 5 to 7
Cast
Corinne Marchand
Cléo
Antoine Bourseiller
Antoine
Dominique Davray
Angèle
Dorothée Blank
Dorothée
Michel Legrand
Bob
Credits
Director
Agnès Varda
Screenplay
Agnès Varda
Produced by
Georges de Beauregard
Cinematography by
Jean Rabier
Cinematography by
Alain Levent
Cinematography by
Paul Bonis
Edited by
Janine Verneau
Edited by
Pascale Laverrière
Music by
Michel Legrand
Assistant directors
Marin Karmitz
Assistant directors
Bernard Toublanc-Michel
Set design by
Bernard Evein

Current

Godmotherly Love

The Complete Films of Agnès Varda

Godmotherly Love

So unique and propulsive was Agnès Varda’s vision that she could be said to be her own ancestor and her own progeny.

By Alexandra Hidalgo

A Woman’s Truth

The Complete Films of Agnès Varda

A Woman’s Truth

Over the course of an extraordinary six-decade career, Agnès Varda fused her feminist politics with an original artistic practice that made her a leading figure of the French New Wave.

By Ginette Vincendeau

Cléo from 5 to 7
Cléo from 5 to 7
Agnes Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7, the first fully-achieved feature by the woman who would become the premiere female director of her generation, dazzled when it opened, and looks even more timely today in its tackling of the fashionable subject of f…

By Molly Haskell

Jordan Firstman’s Top 10
Jordan Firstman’s Top 10

The actor, writer, and director offers irreverent commentary on some of his favorite films, including the gay classic Weekend and the provocative satire Putney Swope.

Pietro Marcello’s Top 10
Pietro Marcello’s Top 10

The director of Martin Eden chooses a selection of films dear to his heart, including classics that made a deep impression on him in childhood.

Stepping Out: On Watching Women Walk
Stepping Out: On Watching Women Walk

A pedestrian activity becomes a radical vision in Elevator to the Gallows, La notte, Vagabond, and other films that follow their female stars on foot.

By Imogen Sara Smith

Rodarte’s Top 10
Rodarte’s Top 10

Kate and Laura Mulleavy founded Rodarte in Los Angeles, California, in 2005. Rodarte is known for its artistic mixture of high couture, California influences, and explorations into other art forms.

Explore

Agnès Varda

Writer, Director

Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda

The only female director of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda has been called both the movement’s mother and its grandmother. The fact that some have felt the need to assign her a specifically feminine role, and the confusion over how to characterize that role, speak to just how unique her place in this hallowed cinematic movement—defined by such decidedly masculine artists as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut—is. Varda not only made films during the nouvelle vague, she helped inspire it. Her self-funded debut, the fiction-documentary hybrid 1956’s La Pointe Courte is often considered the unofficial first New Wave film; when she made it, she had no professional cinema training (her early work included painting, sculpting, and photojournalism). Though not widely seen, the film got her commissions to make several documentaries in the late fifties. In 1962, she released the seminal nouvelle vague film Cléo from 5 to 7; a bold character study that avoids psychologizing, it announced her official arrival. Over the coming decades, Varda became a force in art cinema, conceiving many of her films as political and feminist statements, and using a radical objectivity to create her unforgettable characters. She describes her style as cinécriture (writing on film), and it can be seen in formally audacious fictions like Le bonheur and Vagabond as well as more ragged and revealing autobiographical documentaries like The Gleaners and I and The Beaches of Agnès.