Agnès Varda

Le bonheur

Le bonheur

Though married to the good-natured, beautiful Thérèse (Claire Drouot), young husband and father François (Jean-Claude Drouot) finds himself falling unquestioningly into an affair with an attractive postal worker. One of Agnès Varda's most provocative films, Le bonheur examines, with a deceptively cheery palette and the spirited strains of Mozart, the ideas of fidelity and happiness in a modern, self-centered world.

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Film Info

  • France
  • 1965
  • 80 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.66:1
  • French
  • Spine #420

Special Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Agnès Varda
  • The Two Women of "Le bonheur" (2006), a short piece featuring actors Claire Drouot and Marie-France Boyer
  • Thoughts on "Le bonheur" (2006), a discussion between four scholars and intellectuals discussing the concept of happiness and its relation to the film
  • Two short pieces by Varda investigating people's idea of happiness
  • Jean-Claude Drouot Returns (2006), a featurette in which the actor revisits the film's setting forty years later
  • Segment from the 1964 television program Démons et merveilles du cinéma, featuring footage of Varda shooting Le bonheur
  • Interview with Varda from 1998 about Le bonheur
  • Du côté de la côte (1958), a short film by Varda exploring the tourist destination of the Côte d'Azur
  • Theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation

Available In

Collector's Set

4 by Agnès Varda

4 by Agnès Varda

DVD Box Set

4 Discs

$79.96

Collector's Set

The Complete Films of Agnès Varda

The Complete Films of Agnès Varda

Blu-ray Box Set

15 Discs

$199.96

Special Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Agnès Varda
  • The Two Women of "Le bonheur" (2006), a short piece featuring actors Claire Drouot and Marie-France Boyer
  • Thoughts on "Le bonheur" (2006), a discussion between four scholars and intellectuals discussing the concept of happiness and its relation to the film
  • Two short pieces by Varda investigating people's idea of happiness
  • Jean-Claude Drouot Returns (2006), a featurette in which the actor revisits the film's setting forty years later
  • Segment from the 1964 television program Démons et merveilles du cinéma, featuring footage of Varda shooting Le bonheur
  • Interview with Varda from 1998 about Le bonheur
  • Du côté de la côte (1958), a short film by Varda exploring the tourist destination of the Côte d'Azur
  • Theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
Le bonheur
Cast
Jean-Claude Drouot
François
Claire Drouot
Thérèse
Marie-France Boyer
Émilie
Sandrine Drouot
Gisou
Olivier Drouot
Pierrot
Paul Vecchiali
Paul
Credits
Director
Agnès Varda
Screenplay
Agnès Varda
Produced by
Mag Bodard
Cinematography by
Jean Rabier
Cinematography by
Claude Beausoleil
Sound
Louis Hochet
Sound
Antoine Bonfanti
Edited by
Janine Verneau
Music by
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Set design by
Hubert Monloup

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Agnès Varda

Writer, Director

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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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