Vagabond: Agnès Varda on a Journey between Realism, Feminism and Post-modernism

The contribution discusses Vagabond (Sans toit ni loi, 1985), one of the most important creative achievements of Agnès Varda, one of the most prominent representatives of European and world auteur cinema. In its analysis and interpretation of the film, the contribution focuses on the film’s exceptional structural, expressive, stylistic, narrative and substantive diversity and complexity. It foregrounds the conception of the main character, the young vagabond Mona, who, with her decision for a lone and free life on the road, defies a series of prescribed and unwritten social norms and rules. The text confronts us with the film’s multi-layered narrative structure based on a unique stringing of memorial segments. It examines in detail the stylistic elements of the work, marked by a combination of features characteristic of fiction and documentary cinema, the alternation of the principles of realism and post-modernism and a deepened dialogue with the past through the use of examples from other arts. It also points out a few important aspects which make the film a key example of female or feminist cinema.