George and I took the master track of the two-hour radio show with Wolfman Jack as DJ and played it back on a Nagra in a real space - a suburban backyard. He used it in The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and American Graffiti: In the 70s, he pioneered a technique called worldizing, for which he used a mix of pristine studio-recorded and rougher set-recorded sounds to make a more immersive soundscape for theater audiences. That’s a quote from legendary film editor and sound designer Walter Murch. I love echo - any kind of reverberation or atmosphere around a voice or a sound effect that tells you something about the space you are in. I’ve added Cléo from 5 to 7 to my HBO Max queue but you can also find it on Kanopy (accessible with a library card) and The Criterion Channel. The film represents diegetic action said to occur between 5 and 7 p.m., although its run-time is 89 minutes.
Stylistically, Cléo from 5 to 7 mixes documentary and fiction, as had La Pointe Courte. She cannot be constructed through the gaze of others, which is often represented through a motif of reflections and Cléo’s ability to strip her body of “to-be-looked-at-ness” attributes (such as clothing or wigs). On a deeper level, Cléo from 5 to 7 confronts the traditionally objectified woman by giving Cléo her own vision. The film is superficially about a woman coming to terms with her mortality, which is a common auteurist trait for Varda. A synopsis via Wikipedia:Ĭléo from 5 to 7 follows a pop singer through two extraordinary hours in which she awaits the results of a recent biopsy. Evan Puschak’s Nerdwriter is a particular favorite guiding light and in his latest video, he talks about Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7, a film I now want to watch as soon as possible. I keep tabs on a few trusted film school-ish YouTube channels and while I like when they cover films I’ve seen or those directed by my favorite directors, it’s more valuable when they introduce me to something new.