Le Bonheur

  • Archive - Festival 34
  • Director: Agnès Varda
  • : Cine Tamaris
  • France 1965
  • 90 minutes
  • French
  • Subtitles in Hebrew, English

François, a young carpenter, lives happily with his wife and their children. His life is divided between the carpenter’s shop, picnics in the country and peaceful evenings at home. One day, he meets a postal clerk called Emilie.

One of Agnès Varda's most provocative films, Le bonheur examines, with a deceptively cheery palette and the spirited strains of Mozart, the ideas of fidelity and happiness in a modern, self-centered world. Varda lets her camera do the telling. It records ironies and exposes cliché, but it leaves moral accounting to the audience.

Restored Digital Copy


  • Director Agnès Varda
  • Production Mag Bodard
  • Script Agnès Varda
  • Cinematography Jean Rabier, Claude Beausoleil
  • Editing Janine Verneau
  • Music Jean-Michel Defaye
  • Festivals Berlin 1965 (Special Prize of the Jury)
  • Actors Jean-Claude Drouot, Claire Drouot, Olivier Drouot, Sandrine Drouot
  • Source MK2, Paris