Intervju AGNES VARDA
Le bonheur: “A beautiful summer fruit with a worm inside.”Varda:
Why?
Dupont:
I took it personally: it had never before occurred to me that I was replaceable!
Varda:
Ah! I know why! You were right! You can put your tape recorder on now. [In fact, it was already running. I didn’t want to miss a word.]
It’s a tough one. Yes, we are each unique, but society makes us replaceable because we’re [simply] social functions. We work, we make babies, society runs smoothly. What hurts in this movie is the way the second wife does the same things the first wife did. Le bonheur is about the way society functions.
The movie is lyrical, with Mozart and the Île de France countryside of the Impressionists. To me, the film is like a beautiful summer fruit, seductive, a beautiful summer film—but you open it, and there’s a worm inside.
Dupont:
Did the film come from something personal in you?
Varda:
Anger! I had written a film, Les créatures, and presented it to the government film commission [l’avance sur recettes, which awards funding]. My producer, Mag Bodard, who had produced Jacques’s Umbrellas of Cherbourg and knew how successful Cléo had been, presented the film to them—which was rejected by the board.2
(Rosalie, by the kitchen, calls out to ask if we want anything more.)
Varda:
Rosa, it’s you?
Rosalie:
Yes.
Varda:
You want tea?
Rosalie:
No. Do you want more tea? I’m leaving the hot water.
Varda:
What are you doing now, working or resting?
Rosalie:
I’m working …
(With that, Agnès turns her attention back to me.)
Varda:
So, the producer gave me the news on a Friday and I was so mad I asked when the next commission meeting would take place; it was the following Tuesday. I said, “I’m proposing another film.” Every day on the rue Daguerre, in a neighborhood of workers, I saw artisans and their wives who took in sewing, modest couples who had no other ambition but to be happy and spend Sunday in the country. This idea was—for intellectuals who try to understand the meaning of life, for me who had made Cléo de 5 à 7—fascinating.
I wrote the script on a Friday. On Saturday, I cut and edited the text. I asked Jacques Demy, with whom I was living, to recopy it all for me. Sunday, we stayed in bed all morning, and he recopied the fresh version while I rewrote certain scenes and dialogue. Sunday night we rewrote the whole script, by hand. I didn’t keep that version, which was dumb of me.
Dupont:
How wonderfully supportive. He was a dear?
Varda:
Well, it was normal. We were in that room there. [She points upstairs.] Then, the next day, Monday, a girl typed up stencils of the script—remember [mimeograph] stencils? We gathered up twenty-seven copies along with a director’s letter of intention and synopsis, and on Tuesday evening, we delivered the whole package.
Dupont:
So, this became Le bonheur? It concerns a small family, a tight unit, where the man is married and has kids with a pretty blonde; then, he chooses another blonde. He tells his wife he is even happier now. She answers that she is happy for him, then disappears—and is found drowned in a pond!
Varda:
A small universe! But the concept is interesting: love is not exclusive, it can be multiple. Our society doesn’t let us express this, but the impulse to love is strong when we’re young.3 He continues to love the first one, but in our society, what he wants is not possible. His wife seems to agree, but then … she disappears, and slips into a pond.4
He remakes his life and has the same quality of life. It’s possible, human—except it’s amoral. Society won’t accept [it]. The story is an old story with sweet scenes and scenery, and so, the film slipped by just like that!
Dupont:
So, it was funded! It’s a film that still hurts.
Varda:
Yes, yes, it hurts. The movie was a success, and a scandal, and did well. We got the Golden Bear at Berlin, and I still wonder how, after La Pointe Courte, I wrote this movie out of the blue! Perhaps because of anger, my anger against that commission that turned me down!
Thérèse Liotard (left) and Valérie Mairesse (right) in One Sings, the Other Doesn’t.
Dupont:
It’s interesting to jump ahead from Le bonheur, which to me is a film about a woman who can’t express herself, in 1964, to L’une chante l’autre pas [One Sings, the Other Doesn’t] in 1976. In contrast to the theme of marriage in the first, One Sings, the Other Doesn’t is a story of two friends, played by Valérie Mairesse and Thérèse Liotard, and their evolution in 1962–77, during the women’s movement. It took a long time for women to come out and express themselves, didn’t it?
Varda:
Le bonheur is about the duty of being a woman … but women didn’t come out just like that. It was an age when women reflected; there were collectives, demonstrations and trials, the petition in favor of abortion. You weren’t in France then?
Dupont:
Yes, but I was in the suburbs.
Varda:
But you were working! You were having babies. One of the songs in the movie is “When you are almost a mother …”
Dupont:
Yes, the women’s movement certainly fought for that recognition of women’s labor in the home. But One Sings isn’t just about militancy: there’s compassion.
Varda:
There were those who said the movie was too feminist, others not feminist enough. Debates! And then those who said, “You didn’t dare do a story about lesbians!” But that wasn’t the subject of my film! One woman needs money for an abortion, the other finds it for her friend and gets in trouble with her parents, and then her friend gives her man the money to help him—he’s a weak man and he kills himself.
A feminist manifestation in One Sings, the Other Doesn’t.
Dupont:
That’s so violent, it’s a shock.
Varda:
She has to rebuild herself after this trauma, and she does, from victim to activist—she becomes a militant feminist, while the little rebel transmits feminist messages with her songs. It was an age when women organized. There were marches and manifestos in favor of abortion.5 It was a political act that provoked reactions. Women were waking up. Women made movies, made so many films …
Dupont:
Like Nelly Kaplan, who made La fiancée du pirate [A Very Curious Girl] in 1969?
Varda:
Yes, that was a good movie—with Bernadette Lafont. She was very angry, Nelly! And Mais qu’est ce qu’elles veulent? [But What Do They Want?, 1976] was a terrific film by Coline Serreau.6 And Patricia Mazuy, who worked with me. I waited, I watched the others’ movies.
But the idea of L’une chante is that there are different ways to be militant. [The composer] Pomme’s way was more fun. It was an age of great singers: Georges Brassens, Leo Ferré. I wrote militant, feminist words for the film’s songs. It was important to be militant with humor, because we were called mal baisées [“frustrated hags”] and râleuses [“hysterical harpies”]. My movie came at just the right moment and was a big hit. People tell me today that the movie gave them courage.
Dupont:
And what does Rosalie say? The film is dedicated to her, and she appeared in it on her eighteenth birthday.
Varda:
She’s in the last scene; she is the face of the future. And Mathieu, who was four, is in the movie wearing his Zorro costume!
Dupont:
You were what the French call a fille-mère: Rosalie was born out of wedlock. That was very brave for the time.
Varda:
I like to say I was the fille-père, the papa. We didn’t live together with the father. My mother was great about it. She said: if you want a baby that way, that’s your decision.
Dupont:
You were an adventuress!
Varda:
An adventuress, yes, and a radical feminist. I know why. My mother had five children: two older than I was and two younger, so I was the middle one, and independent. I was radical and independent.
Dupont:
And you weren’t angry?
Varda:
Yes, I was angry! I took off from home, disappeared for two months, without any money—and gave them no news. My bourgeois father didn’t want to tell the police to look for me because he was afraid of scandal. When I learned his social position was what counted [most], I wasn’t angry with him. I thought, he’s protecting his bourgeois position … but he gave me my freedom, my strength.
Dupont:
We need strength, and stamina. And sometimes, confrontation can be good! A strong father to stand up to—that can give strength. I remember rebelling against my father, and leaving home, too.
Varda:
That led me to cinema. I took photos of everything you can imagine: public meetings, weddings. I became a photographer. That was my job and my desire. I can take you to my photo studio across the way if you like.
