After making her first feature "La Pointe-Courte", Agnès Varda was offered a commission to make a tourism short about the castles of the Loire Valley. She initially balked at the idea, but Alain Resnais convinced her to take the job saying that she would find her "own little music" in the subject matter.

Indeed she does. Although the film does take us through all the castles of the region in the order that they were built and provide their history, it also focuses on the gardens, the gardener, locals and many other things. It's an exquisitely shot and playful short, that I confess eventually wore out it's welcome a bit, but really only because I have very little interest in the actual castles.

This magnificent short film was made for the French Tourism Bureau, covering the castles of the Loire Valley. While it succeeds as a travelogue, it ends up as so much more.

Agnes Varda (the director) pays special attention to emphasize the beauty of the regions of her film with a very deep reverence. With the use of colourful panoramas, music and poetry, a special admiration is shown for artists and writers of earlier centuries including those outside France.

It is also special to see people out and about in an era of a time past. While they may have lived with less liberties than what we have today, they were also less burdened with modern plagues such as too much busyness including those that are self-imposed like smartphone obsessions. Travelogues of France will always be treasures. But for the modern viewer to experience an era of simpler enjoyments, it is a nostalgic pleasure that is almost indescribable. - dbamateurcritic

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT: Directing by Agnès Varda

Agnes Varda's first documentary short, on the chateaux of the Loire in France, was commissioned by the French Tourist Bureau; she used the commission

imaginatively to cut her teeth on documentary filmmaking. Only a third of the movie actually focuses on the chateaux. She gets interested in amateur

painters in the area, in gardeners and groundskeepers, on funny names of

small towns on the Loire, and on fashion models looking terrific against the

backdrop of the beautiful historic palaces. Varda was a successful

photographer when she took up filmmaking in 1954, and her visual aesthetic is exquisite in this film. Lots of wordplay in the voiceover commentary, and

playing/punning with words and images, will hopefully be translated and

available someday to English-speakers.