A penetrating study of a marriage on the rocks, set against the backdrop of a small Mediterranean fishing village. Both a stylized depiction of the complicated relationship between a married couple and a documentary-like look at the daily struggles of the inhabitants of Sète in the South of France.
Direction
Varda's debut—she invented a movement before the men got credit.
Cinematography
Stark B&W that makes poverty look devastatingly beautiful.
Editing
Daring cuts between staged drama and real fishermen's lives.
Director
Agnès Varda
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Varda shot this for roughly $14,000 using locals as actors and her own home as base camp, effectively crowdfunding the French New Wave.
Released four years before Breathless, this is the actual first New Wave film—Truffaut and Godard were still writing reviews when Varda was already rewriting cinematic grammar.
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