Daguerreotypes

Agnes Varda presents a loving view at the shop-owners of her street with much care for their everyday lives, their biographies and a keen eye for detail.

It's not exactly a documentary nor a fiction film. It's more of a magical diary on the rue de Dagerre and the people who lived there on that named street. The fiction part and the interview elements all blended well together forming an amusing half tales half fact.. I can't explain it well enough so please go try see it for yourselves and you will never regret and think of all non fiction films as cold heart materials again.

Agnés Varda's best documentary is something as simple as a portrait of various shopkeepers and their families on a street (Rue Daguerre) in Paris. The reason for choosing the location was because during this period in her career Varda lived on this street and also had a 2 year old son who she could not be away from. All filming took place within a 90 meter radius of her home. This limitation becomes a huge asset to the documentary and makes it feel very intimate and emotional.

The French director Agnés Varda was a master at finding beauty in the everyday and giving a voice to ordinary people. This is a theme that generally recurs in her artistry and in several of her documentaries, for example Faces Places and The Gleaners and I. In Daguerréotypes we get to meet both bakers, spice merchants and tailors and their respective. They all have more or less interesting life stories to tell. Common to the dialogues is that they get to answer questions about from/why and when they came to Paris as well as what their dreams are. The documentary is also packed with minor events that happened on the street during the time the recording took place. For example, a magician "Mystag" performs for guests in a small cafe. All this makes the street feel even more alive to us outsiders.

In the end, the documentary gives us as spectators a nostalgic/poetic kick both in terms of environments and life. The whole thing is presented in a particularly beautiful/moving way and thus becomes an enjoyable time document from a bygone era. If I ever go to Paris, I will definitely visit the Rue Daguerre, but before that I will continue to visit the Rue Daguerre of the time in Daguerréotypes.

Given the complexity of the editing, the script, the essay, the veritee situations, the technical limitations of that period and the amount of films Agnes was shooting in a row, to come up with something like this... wow.

Very affectionate portraits of Agnes neighbours - mostly shopkeepers, at work and at play.

For me, the extended sequence where they attend a performance of the local magician (and all-round entertainer) is the highlight, but there's lots else to savour here.