Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

In real time, Cléo becomes more real, more subject than object. She discards her whipped-cream wig and polka dots for a simple black shift. She performs less and feels more.

Sixty years after it was first released, Cléo from 5 to 7 has finally leapt into the top 20: a slow pace for a film so light on its feet. When was this immaculate feature film, Agnès Varda’s essay on time and space, love and death, ever not on our minds?

Arriving with the first surge of the French New Wave, Cléo from 5 to 7 crackles with the energy and modernity of that cinephile movement, but it’s ultimately an introspective piece, characterised by the philosophical preoccupations of Varda’s Left Bank peers. Corinne Marchand plays Cléo, a blonde pop singer whose vanity relaxes as her anxieties swell. As the film begins, she visits a tarot reader, hoping for good news about the medical test results she is awaiting – but the cards spell only death, and transformation.

While Cléo’s mind is fixed on the future, Varda’s camera captures her in the present tense, killing time in Paris as she ponders her own decay. Echoing Marcel Duchamp’s 1912 painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, Varda dissects a trip down the stairs to emphasise the moment as it passes, one we would otherwise have missed. As Cléo, a Parisian Mrs Dalloway, walks the streets of her city, Varda also captures a broader sense of time, an era in history: Paris in the early 1960s, with its crowds, cafés, shops, music, fashion and cinema. The geography is precise: Varda called the film “the portrait of a woman painted on to a documentary about Paris”.

The film shifts from colour to blackand- white to remind us that this is what cinema does – it transforms life. A film within the film turns the idea into a joke: life makes no sense in monochrome. But Cléo is transformed by the film, by these 90 minutes and the images of herself and her future that confront her everywhere. In real time, Cléo becomes more real, more subject than object, more human, more in tune with the city. She discards her whipped-cream wig and polka dots for a simple black shift. She performs less and feels more.

With the kind of playfulness that Varda enjoyed so much, we could call this ticking- clock film timeless. From the feminist analysis of a woman’s commodified beauty and a celebrity’s self-regarding narcissism to the vulnerable heroine acting out her messy emotions in public, the spectre of war and the fear of disease darkening a midsummer day, Cléo from 5 to 7 feels pertinent to the modern moment. It always will. Marchand’s Cléo was pinned in a point in time, but the film marches on, playing on a loop in our imaginations.

Pamela Hutchinson

1962 France, Italy
Directed by
Agnès Varda
Produced by
Georges de Beauregard, Carlo Ponti
Written by
Agnès Varda
Featuring
Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dominique Davray
Running time
90 minutes

Ranked in The Greatest Films of All Time poll

Sight and Sound

Who voted for Cléo from 5 to 7

Critics

Jason Anderson
Canada
Mallory Andrews
Canada
Marina Ashioti
UK/Cyprus
Cameron Bailey
Canada
Rebecca Barden
UK
Cecilia Barrionuevo
Argentina
Alasdair Bayman
UK
Tim Bergfelder
UK
Ela Bittencourt
USA/Brazil
Maria Bonsanti
Italy
Ava Cahen
France
James Leo Cahill
Canada
Lillian Crawford
UK
Barbara Creed
Australia
Bedatri D. Choudhury
India/US
Maria Delgado
UK
Rachael Disbury
UK
Kate Erbland
USA
Laure Gaudenzi
France
Jan Göransson
Sweden
Andrei Gorzo
Romania
Bruno Guaraná
United States
Haden Guest
USA
Paula Guthat
US
Anke Hahn
Germany
Fionnuala Halligan
UK
Rahul Hamid
US
Vinzenz Hediger
Germany
Philip Horne
UK
Tom Huddleston
UK
Helen Hughes
UK
Pamela Hutchinson
UK
Frédéric Jaeger
Germany
Namrata Joshi
India
Philip Kemp
UK
Anna Kopecka
Ireland
Diego Lerer
Argentina
Helena Lindblad
Sweden
Tara Lomax
Australia
Roger Luckhurst
UK
Lee Marshall
UK/Italy
Emily Maskell
UK
Katherine McLaughlin
UK
Karsten Meinich
Norway
Christoph Michel
Germany
Daniela Michel
Mexico
Jelena Mišeljić
Montenegro
Isabel Moir
UK
Whitney Monaghan
Australia
Claire Monk
UK
Paul O'Callaghan
UK/Germany
María Palacios Cruz
UK
Sanjin Pejković
Bosnia and Herzegovina/Sweden
Alastair Phillips
UK
Sven Pötting
Germany
Richard Propes
USA
Kiva Reardon
USA
Carrie Rickey
USA
Catherine Russell
Canada
Kate Saccone
Netherlands
Alexandra Schneider
Germany
Adam Scovell
UK
Amy Sloper
USA
Imogen Sara Smith
USA
Margaret Smith
Mikaela Smith
UK
David Sterritt
USA
Hannah Strong
UK
Muriel Tinel-Temple
UK
J. M. Tyree
USA
Sydney Urbanek
Canada
Miguel Valverde
Portugal
Belén Vidal
UK
Ginette Vincendeau
France/UK
Harriet Warman
UK
Michael Wedel
Germany
Charles Whitehouse
UK
Mary Wiles
New Zealand
Norm Wilner
Canada
Michael Wood
USA
Iván Zgaib
Argentina

Directors

Mania Akbari
Iran
Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet
France
Julie Delpy
France
Cheryl Dunye
Andreas Fontana
Switzerland
Nan Goldin
USA
Varun Grover
India
Carol Morley
UK
John Paizs
Canada
Luke Seomore
UK
Ann Turner
Australia
Rebecca Zlotowski
France

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