Arguably the greatest film-maker of the French New Wave, Varda – who has died – continued making her distinctive brand of wise, personal, accessible cinema into her late 80s
For me, Agnès Varda was the greatest of that great and long-lived generation of the French New Wave. She was a master of personal cinema and essay cinema, drama, satire, documentary and romance, and her work had a distinctive richness and wisdom. Her debut feature, La Pointe Courte (1954), is a study in contemporary relationships with a poetic poise that surpasses Hiroshima Mon Amour (whose director, Alain Resnais worked on Pointe Courte as editor). Her early masterpiece Cléo from 5 to 7 (1961) is news that stays news: a thrillingly urgent, intensely sexy and melancholy despatch from the epicentre of the 60s Parisian zeitgeist, which is far more interesting and conceptually supple than Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless.
Related: Agnès Varda: ‘I am still alive, I am still curious. I am not a piece of rotting flesh’
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