Most Significant Political Films of All Time

Not “best.” Not “favorite.” Not “most likable.” Most significant. Some are obvious, some obscure. A few will be controversial. Let the debate begin.

The New Republic, Survey by J. Hoberman (based on critics rankings)

100. One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977)–French

Director Agnès Varda

Premise:

Two French women, an aspiring singer and a young mother, are leading parallel lives in the 1970s. They reunite as they search for meaning against the backdrop of the women’s liberation movement.

Grade: B

One Sings, the Other Doesn’t
Film poster

Essay: Written in 1990, for Scottsdale Film Fest, updated in 2022

French title: L’une chante, l’autres pas

French New Wave pioneer Agnès Varda’s ode to female friendship and women’s liberation, One Sings, the Other Doesn’t traces the bond between two women over a dozen years, beginning in 1962.

A light feminist streak runs through Agnes Varda’s “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t,” a tale of female friendship. It spans 14 years in the relationship between two very different women. Pauline (Valerie Mairesse) is a middle-class city girl, at odds with her very conventional and bourgeois family. Suzanne (Therese Liotard) is several years older, a country girl with two illegitimate children and another on the way.

 

 

That bond is forged when Apple (Valérie Mairesse), a 17-year-old with a fiercely independent streak, secures the money needed for her new friend Suzanne (Thérèse Liotard), an overwhelmed mother of two toddlers, to have a safe abortion — across the French border, in Switzerland. “Free will is philosophy in action,” the feisty teen proclaims, and when she and Suzanne meet again, 10 years later, they’re both participating in a courthouse protest over an abortion trial.

Pauline loans Suzanne money for an illegal abortion. At this point, due to social circumstances, the two femmes separate and communicate mainly through postcards. Years later, they meet at an abortion rally, and they have many adventures and stories to share.

This drama with songs (lyrics by Varda) unfolds against the political awakening of the 1960s and 1970s, when gender roles and the idea of family were being questioned and contested.

Varda’s feminist vision embraces love, whimsy, joyful bohemia and tenderness as well as anger over injustice.

One Sings, the Other Doesn’t is too schematic–a tad too much of an agenda feature–to qualify as one of Varda’s best films, which are usually more nuanced and subtle.  This may explain why the film was greeted with mixed reviews upon release in the U.S. and is very seldom shown in festivals, or even retrospectives of Varda’s own oeuvre.

That said, One Sings, the Other Doesn’t offered a fresh take on female friendship with a style that combines non-fictional and narrative elements.  Moreover, it dealt with the theme of abortion, at a time when the issue was ignored (and feared) by American movies due t its controversiality.

Family Movie

Varda was married to Jacques Demy, perhaps best known for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, who died of AIDS. In the film’s last scene, Suzanne’s teenage daughter is played by Varda’s daughter, Rosalie Varda-Demy, and in earlier scenes, the boy Zorro is played by Varda’s son, Mathieu Demy.

It may or may not be a coincidence that in the same year, Claudia Weill made the highly acclaimed indie, Girlfriends, which also told the story of female friendship over time.

Criterion Edition

The Director-Approved Special Edition includes:

Credits:

Directed, written by Agnès Varda

Produced by Ciné Tamaris
Starring Thérèse Liotard
Cinematography Charlie Van Damme
Music by François Werthmeimer, Orchidée
Distributed by Ciné-Tamaris

Release date: March 9, 1977 (France)

Running time: 116 minutes