Affective Encounters. Approaching Changing Landscapes Through Intermediality in Films by Éric Rohmer and Agnès Varda

This chapter examines intermedial occurrences in two films shot in 1964, Changing Landscape, by Éric Rohmer, made for French television, and Happiness by Agnès Varda. A joint analysis is developed from a theoretical perspective focusing on affective intermediality and landscape, the latter understood both as a product of a cultural construction to which several arts and media contribute, and as a medium in itself. The investigation considers the peculiar historical scenario of the Paris region in the 1960s, marked by severe changes in the built and natural environment. In this context, the two films emphasize the dynamic activity of landscape as a “process” which culturally mediates the relationships of the spectators, and of film characters, with what surrounds them. Rohmer devises a pedagogical film expressly aimed at helping viewers appreciate the landscapes they inhabit, marked by signs of a recent industrial past as well as by the proliferation of building sites, particularly widespread in the Paris region at the time. To achieve this, he finds an invaluable resource in the mediation of modern paintings (especially abstract ones) inspired by industrial landscapes, paintings which, according to the director, can exert a powerful influence on our gaze upon the world. Varda, for her part, in her controversial feature film (famously analysed by Gilles Deleuze in relation to its peculiar use of colours, creating “affective images”), explores how the Impressionist landscape of Ile-de-France continues to mediate the characters’ sensory and emotional engagements with the Parisian banlieue. In different ways, both films employ affective intermediality to question our relationship with the world we live in.