Agnès Varda

One Sings, the Other Doesn’t

One Sings, the Other Doesn’t

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.

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Film Info

  • France
  • 1977
  • 121 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.66:1
  • French
  • Spine #978

Director-Approved Special Edition Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Agnès Varda and cinematographer Charlie Van Damme, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • 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 Valérie Mairesse and Thérèse Liotard
  • Réponse de femmes, a 1975 short film by Varda, on the question “What is a woman?”
  • Plaisir d’amour en Iran, a 1977 short film by Varda, starring Mairesse and Ali Raffi
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Amy Taubin and excerpts from the film’s original press book

New cover by Michel Landi

Purchase Options

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

The Complete Films of Agnès Varda

The Complete Films of Agnès Varda

Blu-ray Box Set

15 Discs

$174.96

Director-Approved Special Edition Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Agnès Varda and cinematographer Charlie Van Damme, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • 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 Valérie Mairesse and Thérèse Liotard
  • Réponse de femmes, a 1975 short film by Varda, on the question “What is a woman?”
  • Plaisir d’amour en Iran, a 1977 short film by Varda, starring Mairesse and Ali Raffi
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Amy Taubin and excerpts from the film’s original press book

New cover by Michel Landi

One Sings, the Other Doesn’t
Cast
Valérie Mairesse
Pauline/Pomme
Thérèse Liotard
Suzanne
Ali Raffi
Darius
Robert Dadiès
Jérôme
Jean-Pierre Pellegrin
Pierre
Credits
Director
Agnès Varda
Written by
Agnès Varda
Cinematography by
Charlie Van Damme
Sound by
Henri Morelle
Film editing by
Joële Van Effenterre
Music by
François Wertheimer
Music by
Orchidée
Song lyrics by
Agnès Varda
Art direction by
Franckie Diago

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Explore

Agnès Varda

Writer, Director

Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda

The only female director of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda has been called both the movement’s mother and its grandmother. The fact that some have felt the need to assign her a specifically feminine role, and the confusion over how to characterize that role, speak to just how unique her place in this hallowed cinematic movement—defined by such decidedly masculine artists as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut—is. Varda not only made films during the nouvelle vague, she helped inspire it. Her self-funded debut, the fiction-documentary hybrid 1956’s La Pointe Courte is often considered the unofficial first New Wave film; when she made it, she had no professional cinema training (her early work included painting, sculpting, and photojournalism). Though not widely seen, the film got her commissions to make several documentaries in the late fifties. In 1962, she released the seminal nouvelle vague film Cléo from 5 to 7; a bold character study that avoids psychologizing, it announced her official arrival. Over the coming decades, Varda became a force in art cinema, conceiving many of her films as political and feminist statements, and using a radical objectivity to create her unforgettable characters. She describes her style as cinécriture (writing on film), and it can be seen in formally audacious fictions like Le bonheur and Vagabond as well as more ragged and revealing autobiographical documentaries like The Gleaners and I and The Beaches of Agnès.

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