The soft and playful portrayal of a neighbourhood and its community which pours out of the shops and into the fragrant Parisian air.
Stop what you’re doing right now, or rather do this when you’re done reading this, or less rather do this as you’re reading this – be careful not to bump into anyone – put some shoes on and leave your house, walk down your neighbourhood and onto the high street, what do you see? Lots of cars I presume, but look past the metal boxes on wheels, at the very edge of the surfaces they roll on. Shops! Places of busines ran by artisans, essential workers, people who come from far and wide. The vital organs of your community, oxygenating the streets with chatter, life and most of all business. Their business, your business with them and the relations that come tied to that.
Agnes Varda’s classic documentary Daguerréotypes (1976) is an intimate portrait of her neighbourhood, illuminating the skin of the streets with the warm grey light of familiarity. Visiting the shops on her street, Rue Daguerré, she shows us life behind the glass, capturing these delicate interactions between customer and shopkeeper. Each little vignette from various shops; butcher, baker, tailor, musicians, instructors, perfumers, hair-dressers, show us the movement of customers through their shops, bringing in wind and susurrations from the street outside and into their four walls. The arrival of a magic festival in the neighbourhood shows us exactly how interconnected this community is when all the shop-keepers come to watch tricks that freak nature out. Shop-keepers become customers when they visit other shops in their vicinity, the presence of each shop helping the other.
The film is crafted with the cardinal traditions of documentary, inserting oneself into the main nerve of the action, big or small and reporting it from the inside. Inside these small shops on the streets of Paris, the camera stands shoulder to shoulder with the customers looking at all the wares that stack the shelves. The camera swallowed me up whole and inserted me into these shops, waiting to pay for a freshly baked baguette which I must say is a rare sight for these days. I’ll allow myself the liberty of a small tangential ramble, so it wasn’t until last week that I uncovered the foul truth of the bakery sections in places like Tesco and Lidl, THE BREAD ISN’T FRESH?! They sure had me fooled, I assumed if they have a whole bakery section, they’d bake it fresh rather than baking, freezing and rebaking it again.
Back on track here. A documentarian should be “first in, last out” when reporting, meaning that we should see everything that goes into opening and closing these places, the little rituals of preparation as these people gear up for another day of work give us a peek behind the shutters, early in the morning when sleep is still keeping me fastened to my bed.
Formally this film is quite simple, but not bland by any right. The editing is quaint and comical at times where the words from the previous scene guide the cut to an image that compliments it stitching the cut together with evocative imagery. It’s these little things that can make what would usually be quite a basic film transition catch us by surprise. Take some notes everyone, no more government subsidies for basic cuts! (unless it fits)
Accordions dominate the musical track, but then again are you at all surprised, when in Paris. What plays even more life into it is the punctuation with the sounds you’d hear floating in the streets; random out of context snippets of conversation, cars driving past, pigeons flapping away, which creates a discord of these neck of the woods.
Structurally the film personifies customers becoming familiar with their shopkeepers where the shop-keepers don’t introduce themselves until we’ve seen them at work for a bit. Visit them a few more times and you’ll strike up a conversation about where they come from and what pulled them here until they begin to share the workings of their dreams.
The film closes with a series of environmental portraits of these fine ladies and gentlemen, standing behind the counters surrounded by the elements of their livelihood in their natural habitats, who serve the community which I would say is even more poignant today where everyone but the essential workers have been sent back home. While we laze around and enjoy the lockdown, or go totally insane, depends on which school of thought you belong to, business for these people runs as usual and it’s their wonderful work which makes sure that what’s left of society doesn’t topple over like a poorly built Jenga tower.
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