Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30405 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-05-16
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Black & White, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 90 minutes

Amazon.com
Agnes Varda, the lone woman in the French New Wave boys' club, made her reputation with her second feature Cleo from 5 to 7, a 90-minute drama set in real time exploring the internal turmoil of a flighty young pop singer who awaits the results of a medical examination for cancer. Leaving behind her elegant, almost antiseptic apartment for the bustle of the Parisian streets, she weaves through crowds and watches street performers while struggling with her fears and self-recriminations, confronting her shortcomings and finding hope in a chance meeting with a young soldier. Varda captures the vibrant social world and its easy rhythms in creamy black and white with smooth long takes, bringing an almost tactile quality to Cleo's personal odyssey, punctuated with chapter titles marking the time until her appointment at the hospital. Corinne Marchand's Cleo enters as a spoiled adolescent, but introspective internal monologues and brief encounters with strangers etch a portrait of a woman hiding her fears under a façade of flightiness, only discarding the mask when she firmly embraces life in the face of possible death. --Sean Axmaker

Additional features
Agnes Varda's Cleo From 5 to 7 wonderfully captures the vivid beauty of "everyday" Paris in the 1960s. A visual treat, this Criterion DVD release is a perfect means to view this French New Wave classic outside the theater. Agnes Varda herself supervised its digital transfer created from a 35mm fine-grain master positive. This letterboxed edition, presented in its original 1.66 aspect ratio, includes the 'telling' restored, opening color sequence with the Tarot card reader. Clearly presenting Cleo's life story through a series of antiquated images, this color sequence adds a strong dramatic contrast to the film's black and white imagery. All in all, Criterion's Cleo From 5 to 7 is a sharp presentation of a timeless classic. --Rob Bracco

Customer Reviews

Cinematic Tour de Force
Even if French New Wave Cinema of the 1950's and 1960's is of no interest to you, don't be put off seeing this incredible film. If you do have an interest in films from this period and you haven't yet seen "Cleo" then make a promise to yourself to see this film now. Director Agnes Varda made a movie back in 1960-61 that rises above language, time, place and fashion to be a masterpiece in world cinema. In some respects this is a neglected masterpiece as it is seldom spoken in the same breath as films like "400 Blows", but that makes the pleasure of discovering it all the more sweet. Amongst the highlights - a gorgeous and clever score by Michel Legrand who makes a wonderful appearance as "Bob, the Pianist"; astonishing camerawork throughout - innumerable sequences that make you wonder "how did they do that?". Varda is such an assured filmmaker that she can turn what at first appear to be momentary lapses of energy and inspiration into ever more revealing and moving climaxes. One of the great movies. You won't regret spending a summer evening in Paris with Cleo.

READ THE SIGNS
It's not so very often that I see a movie two evenings in a row, but I simply had to do it with French director Agnès Varda's CLEO FROM 5 TO 7. Because, unlike in today first and only degree movies, there is so much in it. Not only in the dialogs, but also in the way Agnès Varda has patiently built her movie ; just try to watch CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 while concentrating on what is behind the main action, observe the clocks that are always present and remind us Cléo's fate, look at the stores punctuating Cléo's race through the Paris of 1961. You have to literally read this movie.

Cléo, an addict of all kind of superstitions, will show you the way ; for her, everything and everybody knows that she is marked by illness. With her and Angèle, her guardian, you will learn how to read the signs that are surrounding you. The first scene of the movie, in a fortune-teller's apartment, is the only scene shot in colour and, in my opinion, a lesson of cinema.

Music and songs take also an important place in Agnés Varda's CLEO FROM 5 TO 7. Michel Legrand, the future composer of THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG and LES DEMOISELLES OF ROCHEFORT, plays the role of Cléo's friend and composer and delivers a superb performance. Corinne Marchand has the beauty of a French depressed Marilyn Monroe and her encounter with a returning soldier is a moment of pure freshness.

Excellent sound and images for this Criterion release but,alas, no extra-features except for english subtitles.

A DVD for your library.

Poetry meets anti-studio system guerrilla New Wave
"Cleo from 5 to 7" was shot mostly on the streets of Paris where our beautiful heroine, a rather shallow singer and model, roams after she's taken a hypochondriac's test to see if she has cancer. Floating on the mood of doubt she has accumulated (which won't be allayed until the test results come in), she sees things with new eyes, becomes deeper and less superficial, and eventually meets up with a chance stranger who gently goads her into a new type of romance.

Varda's film isn't exactly "eccentric," "difficult" or "intellectual" as some New Wave films are, but then it's nowhere near trite or simplistic either. Above all, it's just an amazingly beautiful and poetic film, and, of course, very romantic in a patented French way. Varda being a woman, it follows logically that the so-called 'women's angle' is well represented, yet for all that, if you didn't know Varda was female, you'd probably never guess it from watching her film. It's very close in tone to her husband Jacues Demy's "Lola," early Truffaut and Chabrol's 1960 masterpiece "Les Bonnes Femmes," which also deals with women's problems, and which hardly anyone has seen since it's criminally never been released on video.