Analysis Of The Movie ' Cleo From 5 ', ' Directed By Agnes Varda

Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) - Laura Mulvey. Thesis. N.d. N.p.: Laura Mulvey, 1975. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) - Laura Mulvey. NG Communications, 2006. Web. 20 Feb. 2014. .

Several film theorists have used a variety of tactics and view points to analyze feature films since their inception. One of the most prominent theorists of those that analyze films from a feminist perspective is Laura Mulvey. Mulvey is famous for her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which presents an array of theories involving the treatment of women in films. Arguably the most notable idea presented in Mulvey’s work is the existence of the “male gaze” in films. This essay will examine Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze in relation to Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Vertigo. Vertigo does not fit the criteria of a film that

The year is 1979, 15-year-old Jamie (played by newcomer Lucas Jade Zummerman) is reading an excerpt from “Our Bodies Ourselves”, one of his newly acquired feminist essays to his mother Dorothea (cinema’s matriarch Annette Bening). He proclaims every line about the politics of the female orgasm with pride and satisfaction in regards to the rapid pace of his maturity. After excitedly finishing the last paragraph, his mother looks at him and says with tender anguish “Do you think you know more about me from reading that?”

In this film while Cleo struggles to occupy herself with different activities of her daily life while she awaits the fate of her cancer results. While Cleo occupies herself with different people before actually meeting with her doctor later in the day, the film touches on how women are being ignored and not taken seriously. During this time, it would seem that women get completely undervalued and underappreciated. Throughout the movie time after time Cleo’s real feelings were being ignored. In the film after Cleo had received the devastating news from her hand reader, Cleo and her assistant went into a diner. Cleo not being able to hold in the results that she heard broke down into tears. While a couple of men came to her side to assist her

Thus, a woman may attempt to whatever it takes to take back control and preserve her sexual objectivity. Beauvoir states that woman will begin to “exaggerates her femininity, she adorns herself, wears perfume, she becomes totally charming, gracious, pure immanence…” (Beauvoir 621). Ultimately, Cléo is fearful of the fact that her potential cancer is an indication of her aging, that she no longer can represent the ideal woman if she ages. Thus, she attempts to refuse the aging process, thus refusing her and every person’s fate.

Agnes Varda is not only one of the few female directors of new wave cinema; she is also credited as having helped create the genre. Her short film La Point–Courte is considered by some as the first new wave film. Her first full length movie, Cleo 5 to 7 falls within this genre as well. It is the story of a young woman dying of cancer and how she sees the world in the context of time. We follow the singer Cleo as she changes into the woman Flora and as she does so she begins to look at time in a different manner. It is the way time is represented through the camera shots which really make this film part of its new wave genre.

Creed, B. 1999. Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection. Feminist Film Theory, a Reader, edited by. Sue Thornham. New York: New York U P.

The analysis of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing helps illuminate the portrayal of women and thus the idea of feminism is brought into effect. Both Berger and Dunham try to explain the effects of visuals of women in society and although both writers are arguing about different mediums, both ultimately

Cléo from 5 to 7 (Cléo de 5 à 7) is Agnés Varda’s third film that brought her international fame and respect. Directed by a Belgic born French female director, the film incorporates existentialism, feminism by completely destroying the border between the reality and the surrealism. Cléo from 5 to 7 contains the aspects of documentary and fictional elements at the same time and portrays a life of a spoiled young singer Florence “Cléo” victoire who nervously awaits her medical results through 5 PM till 7 PM on June 22nd. The film is all about the conflicting moments in general – artificiality and realism, bright musical comedy and tragic drama, loveliness and grotesqueness Cléo experiences while walking along the streets, and the meaning of life

In the film, Jean Kilbourne talks about her lifelong observation with regard to how women have been represented in our popular culture. Author stresses out the fact that over decades, the marketing industry dehumanized and objectified the female gender. This was done by the means of creating a fake and unreachable look and figure. Moreover, natural beauty was being gradually replaced by a newly fabricated standard. So called 'sexy' was paired with the merchandise industry and propelled onto the masses. Unfortunately, such advertising techniques negatively affected men and women of our society. Trying to achieve so called perfection, girls began suffering from anorexia, depression and mood disorder. In turn, men developed a desire to be with

The film Sophie Scholl reflects the repetition of the concept of the “Hero from across the sea”. One of Northrop Frye's lessons on biblical stories, he explores in detail what “the hero from across the sea” means. This theory consists of a wasteland that is ruled by the impotent old king, whose land is being destroyed by a sea monster whose only goal is to demand human sacrifice. In this story, the king's daughter “the princess tied to a rock” is chosen as a sacrifice to the sea monster, but luckily a “hero from across the sea” comes to her rescue, returning the “fertility” to the land. In the movie Sophie Scholl, this idea is shown multiple times, by a variety of characters.

Women in society have been portrayed many ways in film according to the era or according to what society considers appealing. Often times when a women is placed at the center of the story and is the main actress she is the product of what society makes her out to be. Dating back to the Postwar era in Germany to now women in films, particularly the women in Pandora’s Box, A Women Under the Influence, and Frances Ha all to some extent become the outcome of social disintegration. The women in these films are the result of the broken and disturbed societies. In G.W. Pabst Pandora’s Box we will see how Lulu, the main protagonist fits into her society through by representing society during the postwar and stabilized period in Germany. Then through John Cassavetes A Women Under the Influence we will see how Mabel struggles to live in a society that expects so much of her. We will discuss how her illness is the result of certain social roles imposed on her. Finally, through Frances Ha we will see

A sound comparison one could make between Agnes Varda’s and Yasujiro Ozu’s masterpieces is that each presents a question key to feminist theory through the lives of their singular female protagonists: what is the effect of societal pressures on a woman finding her identity? As the titular character Cleo in Agnes Varnas’ Cleo a 5 de 7 rejects her role as an object of the public gaze, and Noriko of Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Spring grapples with her fate to play the part of a traditional Japanese housewife, both directors explore this common concept of finding one’s identity in an unkind world through the use of such themes as routines, charades and emptiness.

Against the neon backdrop of the high-level entertainment business, women inside this floating world are a glamorous and ambivalent existence in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, constantly making an upward endeavour in a modern yet ancient gendered plight. It is noteworthy of Naruse’s exploration of female psychological universe in this film, and I would like to construct a fresh observation concerning his way of representation without putting this film in the established niche of Naruse-cinema or Women’s Film (josei-eiga) in the first place. Although When a Woman Ascends the Stairs passes a feeling on us that the gender relationship is still under the dominance of male money even in the westernised upper class of Japan, I argue that through various formal cinematic techniques, Naruse effectively presents a more notable motif

The film industry is a phallocentric institution that since its inception has always faced the problem of objectifying women. In her article “Visual pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey argues that, “The conventions of mainstream film focus attention on the human form.” (Mulvey 32). Mulvey’s belief is that the film industry is reinforcing the patriarchal societal norms where the focus of attention is on the objectification and oppression of the female form and the glorification of the male ego. Mulvey warns of how the film industry promotes scopophilia, or the act of gaining pleasure from looking at another person, which is typically associated with taking other people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze. Pleasure from looking is split between two roles; the active male and the passive female. Therefore, allowing the male gaze to put his fantasies onto the female figure, and making into an object of male desire. Many of Hitchcock’s films uses the male gaze to allow the audience to be able to derive pleasure from being able to place themselves and their egos onto the perfect image of the main character in the film, whom is usually male. Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Psycho, showcases how the patriarchal society we live in allows the male gaze to objectify a woman’s body. This can be seen through camera angle, movement, and what the audience can see in a frame during a shot.