Associated with · 1962
The French New Wave
The signature film of the movement's Left Bank wing: Agnès Varda's near-real-time portrait of a Paris afternoon, made by a founder of the New Wave and widely taught as one of its landmarks.
Film
Cléo from 5 to 7
by Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda's second feature follows a pop singer through ninety near-real-time minutes of a Paris afternoon as she waits for a medical result that may be cancer. Corinne Marchand's Cléo begins the film as a superstitious beauty watched by everyone and ends it seeing the city — and herself — clearly. A landmark of the Left Bank New Wave and one of the founding films of the female gaze, it is the film most viewers reach Varda through.
- 1962
- 35 mm feature film, black and white with a colour prologue
About Agnès Varda
5 p.m. to 6.30 p.m.
Almost in real time
The film runs ninety minutes and covers, almost minute for minute, an hour and a half of a single afternoon. Varda divides it into short chapters, each headed with a character's name and a clock time, so the audience feels the wait exactly as Cléo does — the clock is the plot.
The title plays on a French idiom. “Cinq à sept” names the late-afternoon hours traditionally kept for a lover; Varda spends them instead on a woman waiting to learn whether she is dying. It is the first of the film's reversals — and, strictly, a small joke on itself, since the action really runs from about five to half past six.
The story
A tarot reading opens the film, in its only passage of colour: the cards frighten Cléo Victoire, a successful pop singer, who is waiting on the result of a biopsy. For the next hour and a half she moves through Paris — a café, a hat shop, a taxi, her own apartment — trailed by her superstition and her fear.
At home she rehearses with her songwriters, one of them played by the composer Michel Legrand, and the session cracks open on a song, “Sans toi,” that she suddenly performs straight to camera. She leaves, sits with her friend Dorothée, drifts through Montparnasse, and comes to rest in the Parc Montsouris, where she meets Antoine, a young soldier on leave from the Algerian War. He walks her to the hospital. The doctor confirms the illness but tells her treatment will begin, and she is, unexpectedly, calm.
From looked-at to looking
The film's real subject is the change named in that arc. Cléo begins as an object — watched by strangers, by mirrors, by her entourage, and by the camera — and vain and passive because of it. As the afternoon wears on she starts to look back: at other faces, at the city, at the war in the newspapers, at her own mortality. Critics have long read it as one of the founding films of the female gaze, a woman shown becoming a seeing subject in real time.
Varda, a photographer before she was a filmmaker, builds the change out of looking itself — point-of-view shots, tracking shots that follow Cléo rather than display her, and documentary faces caught on the real streets of Paris.
A Left Bank film
Cléo from 5 to 7 is the signature film of the New Wave's Left Bank wing — the group around Varda, Alain Resnais, and Chris Marker, older and more essayistic than the Cahiers du cinéma directors. Michel Legrand wrote the score and appears on screen, Jean Rabier shot it, and Georges de Beauregard and Carlo Ponti produced it.
Midway through, Cléo and Dorothée watch a silent comic short made for the film, “Les fiancés du pont MacDonald,” cast with Varda's New Wave friends — Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina among them, alongside Eddie Constantine, Sami Frey, and Jean-Claude Brialy. It is the movement waving at itself inside one of its own films.
1962–
Reception and afterlife
The film competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1962 and established Varda internationally at thirty-four — the first fully achieved feature by the director who would become the leading woman of French cinema.
It has never left the canon. Restored and distributed by the Criterion Collection, it is now among the most-taught films of the movement, a fixture of courses on the New Wave and on the gaze. It is the Left Bank's answer to Breathless: a Paris film about looking, made by the movement's founding woman.
Timeline
1961
Varda shoots the film across a Paris summer, on the Left Bank and around Montparnasse.
11 April 1962
Released in France.
1962
Competes for the Palme d'Or at Cannes; Varda's international breakthrough at thirty-four.
1962
A silent short made for the film, “Les fiancés du pont MacDonald,” puts Godard, Karina, and other New Wave friends on screen inside it.
2000s–
Restored and released by the Criterion Collection; enters the standard teaching canon of the New Wave and of the female gaze.
Frequently asked questions
What is Cléo from 5 to 7 about?
A pop singer, Cléo, waits out an afternoon in Paris for a medical result that may be cancer. Over roughly ninety near-real-time minutes she moves from vain self-absorption to really seeing the city, and herself. Agnès Varda directed it in 1962.
What does the title “Cléo from 5 to 7” mean?
“Cinq à sept” is a French idiom for the late-afternoon hours traditionally reserved for a lover's rendezvous. Varda uses them instead for a woman awaiting a possible death sentence — though the film actually runs from about five to half past six.
Is Cléo from 5 to 7 filmed in real time?
Almost. Its ninety minutes track an hour and a half of one afternoon nearly continuously, divided into short chapters headed with clock times, so the audience shares Cléo's wait.
Do Godard and Anna Karina appear in Cléo from 5 to 7?
Yes — in a silent comic short screened within the film, “Les fiancés du pont MacDonald,” alongside Eddie Constantine, Sami Frey, and Jean-Claude Brialy.
Why is Cléo from 5 to 7 important?
It is a landmark of the Left Bank French New Wave and one of the founding films of the female gaze — a woman shown becoming a seeing subject rather than a watched object — and the film that established Agnès Varda internationally.
Related videos
Cléo from 5 to 7 — re-release trailer (Rio Cinema)
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