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

The characters Sherman portrays, lighting, clothing and expressions are cliché of what is present in cinema, so much that viewers of her work have told Sherman that they ‘remember the movie’ that the image is derived from, yet Sherman having no film in mind at all.[iv] Thus showing that her word has a pastiche of past cinematic genres, and how women are portrayed in cinema and photography and how Sherman has manipulated the ‘male gaze’ around her images so they become ironic and cliché.

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.

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

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 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?”

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.

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.

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

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

Even though male gaze is still the fundamental construct in modern films, I do not think lesbians and majority of women these days enjoy objectification. Women are trying to break through gender differences and evolve as equal being to men. In trying to explain how women are positioned in films, Kaplan says “Psychoanalysis a crucial tool for explaining the needs, desires and male-female positioning that are reflected in film” p. (). Kaplan uses psychoanalysis to argue how women take

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.

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. .

Since the 1940’s, movies have predominately portrayed women as sex symbols. Beginning in the 1940’s and continuing though the 1980’s, women did not have major roles in movies. When they did have a leading role the women was either pretreated as unintelligent and beautiful, or as conniving and beautiful: But she was always beautiful. Before the 1990’s, men alone, wrote and directed all the movies, and the movies were written for men. In comparison, movies of the 90’s are not only written and directed by women, but leading roles are also held by older and unattractive women. In this paper I will show the variations and growth of women’s roles in movies from the 1940’s though the 1990’s.

In society, women are often perceived as the weaker sex, both physically and mentally. In modern times women have leveled the playing field between men and women, and feminism is a highly discussed topic, but for years, women faced discrimination and prejudice both in life and in the workplace, due to their sex. This way of thinking flooded into the world of film. In their works, the authors of each of the various sources address the limitations and liberations of women both on and off the screen in nineteenth century Film and Cinema. Not every source is completely filled with information related to the research topic, but they do cover and analyze many of the same points from different perspectives. Prominent points addressed in each