Waste not: Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse and the heterogeneous documentary film score

Abstract

This essay considers music’s interpretive functions in Varda’s 2008 documentary Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse. The film’s score references the director’s collaborative history with other composers throughout her career. In particular, the author is interested in what Varda’s musical collaborations can tell us about her creative process and her own sense of authorship. The author also claims that Les Glaneurs’ musical selections allow the filmmaker to aurally signify her reflections about the state of contemporary French citizenship. Thus, this essay considers how Les Glaneurs uses French popular music to reflect on the cultural and political significance of economically marginalized French citizens who steal out of economic necessity. The author will attend to the formal construction of the film’s heterogeneous score and discuss the musical contributions from three of Varda’s frequent collaborators, along with Varda’s participation. In doing so, the author argues that Les Glaneurs’ score gives us a fuller understanding of the director’s use of the term ‘gleaning’ in relation to her work as a filmmaker.