10.5 DISCUSSION - Editing Pt. 1
Very few films have realtime relationships between screen time story and/or plot duration. Cléo de 5 à 7, comes close.
Discussion topics should include, but are not limited to:
1. A discussion of the implied story duration and what and how the plot illuminates the passage of time.
2. A discussion of editing and fragmentation. How does editing augment the realtime feel of the film, or not?
3. How does the camerawork, and or camera movement augment the realtime feel of the film, or not?
4. Discuss Cléo de 5 à 7 in respect to Realism, is Cléo a realist film, and when does it stray from a realist aesthetic?
Other elements you noted in utilizing the skeletal outline for Cléo de 5 à 7, or the text.
TIPS:
In a discussion of, "at least three points", in the case of the possible topics listed above, keep in mind that a thorough discussion of your points is necessary. For this discussion no responses are necessary but feel free to do so.
My Post 11-4-2021 ( I made some edits on Sunday night 11-7-21)
After watching Cléo de 5 à 7 (Agnes Varda, 1961) I thought of similarities from another class film The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot, 2019). In that film they seamlessly edited a skateboard ride through San Francisco from one side to the other in three minutes in what seemed like one long take.
They travel through the city in constant motion with the camera either on them or the camera being a substitute for their eyes to see views of San Francisco. Both films I felt were love letters to their own cities; San Francisco and Paris. Both showing great outside views although in greatly different durations. While the view of San Francisco is done in three minutes, the story takes time to unfold. In Cléo de 5 à 7 the entire story is summarized with its entire backstory and film outlined in the first 5 minutes. The whole story. We then get to see how Agnes will take this five-minute story (which with backstory actually covers her adolescence to current career, probably ten years duration) and add her plot and cinematic form to create a film.
To explore my impression of Cléo de 5 à 7 appearing as a real-time long take (although I know this is an editing chapter and it isn't). I read a Criterion article that said that there have been many films that have tried to capture the experience of “real time” such as “Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) to Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2002).” Cléo de 5 à 7 does “account for an hour and a half” in Cléo’s life but not with the “single-camera-take concept that Hitchcock cleverly faked (and that Sokurov would heroically maintain); … it is jazzily photographed and busily edited.” source. I don’t like that they said busily edited, I thought it was dismissive of Agnes Vardas’ great talent.
One tool that Agnes Varda had that the other New Wave filmmakers didn’t have was her great background in photography and documentary filmmaking. In her documentary filmmaking she used handheld cameras to follow her subjects and their lives closely as she did in this film. New Wave directors did use handheld cameras as well. The film is a dramatic narrative but Cléo is almost a documentary subject in the cinematic form. In that sense on the scale of documentary narrative scale from realism to Anti-Realism/Formalism. This picture is closer to the side of realism. The camera is constantly on Cléo for the entire hour and a half of the film or we see her point of view through the eyes of the camera. She is in and out of buildings, cafes and cars. We travel with her through the fast clip of the clock ticking to the one and a half hours of screen duration. By the way, it's called Cleo 5 to 7 because 5 to 7 is the time that men in Paris would meet with their mistresses.
An article from the Cinema department of UMass Boston, notes that in “a scene in which Cléo is walking down the street. In this scene, Agnes Varda uses a handheld camera. This gives the scene an overall shaky look. This shakiness gives off a sense of reality.” The author notes that when a filmmaker uses a handheld camera, they feel closer to the film. “It feels less like I am watching a film and more like I am the one with the camera in my hands.” Cléo is in a state of panic and unwell, “by using a handheld camera that shakes as the cameramen moves, these panicked feelings are heightened.” source
The cinematic form that Agnes has chosen with fast pace through the city with a handheld camera many times or crane views give us a documentarist view of a woman unraveling as the time progresses. The article also discusses how the long takes also add to this feeling. “The long takes add to this [giving a closer looking into Cléo’s feelings] because they slow the pace of the film.” For example, when Cléo is on the car errand with her friend Dorothee and driving around Paris in her car. The article says that in a scene at (at 55m) when Cléo and Dorothee drive together. “As the conversation progresses, the shot never cuts.” This slowed down pace lets us sit in the conversation with them as we get to explore Cléo fears, with a friend that she started out with in the arts.
Response from a student:
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