Ô saisons ô chateaux

Agnes Varda's first documentary short, on the chateaux of the Loire in France, was commissioned by the French Tourist Bureau; she used the commission

imaginatively to cut her teeth on documentary filmmaking. Only a third of the movie actually focuses on the chateaux. She gets interested in amateur

painters in the area, in gardeners and groundskeepers, on funny names of

small towns on the Loire, and on fashion models looking terrific against the

backdrop of the beautiful historic palaces. Varda was a successful

photographer when she took up filmmaking in 1954, and her visual aesthetic is exquisite in this film. Lots of wordplay in the voiceover commentary, and

playing/punning with words and images, will hopefully be translated and

available someday to English-speakers.