Explaining Varda’s Lions Love: a European director responds to an American cultural marketplace

Abstract

From 1955 to 1966, Agnès Varda’s French-language feature film output, entailing four films, was characterized by formal control and cool elegance. After her relocation to Los Angeles in 1968, however, Varda’s work took a sharp turn, as evidenced in 1969’s Lions Love – a bricolage of forms and themes, including Warholian long takes, documentary segments, surreal interludes and re-photographed new reports, all swirling around the ideas of celebrity, performance and self-reflexivity. This article explains this drastic formal and narrative departure as a result of Varda’s response to a new taste culture, specifically, that of American underground cinema and experimental theatre. Using art historian Michael Baxandall’s approach to discussing artistic influence and cultural marketplaces, the article traces a few key important aesthetic trends and concerns that Varda likely drew upon when crafting her first English-language film. Additionally, the article argues that Varda adapted the precedents established by filmmakers like Andy Warhol, Shirley Clarke and William Greaves to her own ends, injecting levity and playfulness into a relatively cynical cultural milieu.