#0000B/#978: VARDA, Agnès: One Sings, The Other Doesn't (1977)

VARDA, Agnès (France)
One Sings, The Other Doesn't [1977]
Spine #0000B/Spine #978

Blu-ray

In the early 1960s in Paris, two young women become friends. Pomme is an aspiring singer. Suzanne is a pregnant country girl unable to support a third child. Pomme lends Suzanne the money for an illegal abortion, but a sudden tragedy soon separates them. Ten years later, they reunite at a demonstration and pledge to keep in touch via postcard, as each of their lives is irrevocably changed by the women's liberation movement. A buoyant hymn to sisterly solidarity rooted in the hard-won victories of a generation of women, One Sings, the Other Doesn't is one of Agnès Varda's warmest and most politically trenchant films, a feminist musical for the ages.

121 minutes

Color
Monaural
in French
1:66:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2019/2020

Director/Writer

Agnès Varda was 49 when she wrote and directed One Sings, the Other Doesn't.

Other Varda films in the Collection:

#0000B/#419: La Pointe Courte (1955)
#0000B: Du Côté De La Côte (1958)
#0000B: Ô Saisons, Ô Chateaux (1958)
#0000B: L'Opéra-Mouffe (1958)
#0000B/#73: Cléo From 5 To 7 (1962)
#0000B: Les Fiancés Du Pont Macdonald (1964)
#0000B: Salut Les Cubains (1964)
#0000B/#420: Le Bonheur (1965)
#0000B: Les Créatures (1966)
#0000B: Elsa La Rose (1966)
#0000B/Eclipse Series 43: Uncle Yanco (1968)
#0000B/Eclipse Series 43: Lions Love (. . . And Lies) (1969)
#0000B/Eclipes Series 43: Black Panthers (1970)
#0000B: Daguerréotypes (1975)
#0000B: Réponse De Femmes (1975)
#0000B: Plaisir D'Amour En Iran (1977)
#0000B/Eclipse Series 43: Documenteur (1981)
#0000B/Eclipse Series 43: Mur Murs (1981)
#0000B: Ulysse (1982)
#0000B: Les Dites Cariatides (1984)
#0000B/#74: Vagabond (1985)
#0000B: 7 P., Cuis., S. De B. . . . (À Saisir) (1985)
#0000B: T'As De Beaux Escalier, Tu Sais (1986)
#0000B: Jane B. Par Agnès V. (1988)
#0000B: Kung-Fu Master! (1988)
#0000B: Jacquot De Nantes (1991)
#0000B: The Young Girls Turn 25 (1993)
#0000B: One Hundred And One Nights (1995)
#0000B: The World Of Jacques Demy (1995)
#0000B: The Gleaners And I (2000)
#0000B: The Gleaners And I: Two Years Later (2002)
#0000B: Le Lion Volatil (2003)
#0000B: Ydessa, Les Ours Et Etc. . . . (2004)
#0000B: The Beaches Of Agnès (2008)
#0000B: Agnès De Ci De Là Varda (2011)
#0000B: Les 3 Boutons (2015)
#0000B: Faces Places (2017)
#0000B: Varda By Agnès (2019)

The Film

The characters of Pauline/Pomme (Valérie Mairesse) and Suzanne (Thérèse Liotard) are fully developed in this lovely cinematic dance through the 60s and 70s. The women are fully fleshed out and Varda keeps the viewer constantly delighted and surprised at each new chapter in their lives.

Of course, the males are by necessity secondary characters, but nevertheless beautifully portrayed: Darius (Ali Raffi), whom we root for as a male feminist when in Paris, and equally despise as a misogynistic asshole in his native Iran; Jérôme (Robert Dadiès) is simply tragic, while we hope Pierre (Jean-Pierre Pellegrin) will be a good match for Suzanne.

The music is delightful, and Varda's camera is in turns both playful and deadly serious.

Film Rating (0-60):

52

The Extras

The Booklet

#0000B:

204-page book, featuring an essay by Michael Koresky.

"One Sings, the Other Doesn't is a musical melodrama that spans more than a decade in the lives to two female friends, from the early sixties to the midseventies, as they overcome personal trials and fight for wider social justice. This is Varda's grandest statement on the experience of women in France. The two characters' lives take divergent paths, as implied by the title, though she brings them back together again and again. In essence, she advances, with graceful simplicity, the political argument that either partnership, domesticity, and motherhood or individualistic freedom is a valid reproductive choice for women. And she does so in the form of an entertaining, accessible movie. As she said, 'You can work outside the system, in the underground, and you can make a very radical statement, but even if your message is very good, you will reach perhaps five thousand people. You will never reach the mass of women.'"

#978:

Twelve-page wraparound featuring an essay by critic Amy Taubin and excerpts from the film’s original press book.

Taubin:

"Independent feature filmmaking was unheard of at the time in France, where most movies were produced by large companies or the two television channels. Aspiring directors, after graduating from film school, had to spend years as assistants to directors, producers, and editors before they were allowed to helm a movie on their own. At the time Varda was making La Point Courte (Spine #0000B/#419), there were no other French female directors. Alice Buy-Blaché, who was a contemporary of Georges Méliès and the Lumière brothers and made more than a thousand films by 1920, had been written out of film history; the early feminist director, theorist, and critic Germaine Dulac's filmmaking had ended by World War II. The male directors who would become the creators of the French New Wave were just beginning to make short films. Varda was friends with one of them, Alain Resnais, and he agreed to edit La Point Courte. She recruited two stars of the TNP (Jean Vilar's Théâtre national populaire) to play a couple whose relationship nearly comes apart because the man wants them to stay in Sète while the woman wants them to go back to Paris — their conflict anticipating that of Pomme and Darius in One Sings, the Other Doesn't."

Press book:

Filmography, cast biographies and essays, plot notes, musical notation for Mon corps est a moi, lyrics, etc.

Commentary

None.

Both:

Women are Naturally Creative: Agnès Varda

A 1977 documentary directed by Katja Raganelli, featuring an interview with Varda shot during the making of the film, plus on-set interviews with actors Mairesse and Liotard.

Réponse de femmes [#0000B]

A 1975 short film by Varda, on the question “What is a woman?”

Plaisir d’amour en Iran  [#0000B]

A 1976 short film by Varda, starring Mairesse and Raffi.

#0000B only:

Nausicaa

A feature-length film directed by Varda for French television in 1970 but suppressed before it could be completed or broadcast, presented from a surviving work print.

Shame on the French government for suppressing this amazing film. With a little imagination, one can visualize what a completed work would look like.

Varda's political outlook blends seamlessly with her dramatic conceptions.

Trailer

Extras Rating (0-40):

33

52 + 33 =

85

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