History can be seen as conflicting ideals between two adjacent periods of time. For example, the enlightenment, a period of extreme reason, praise of rational thought, and search for new order, was immediately followed by the romantic era, a time where art was re-explored and focused on in terms of raw emotion and a temporarily forgotten subjectivity from the era before. Similar to historical eras, cinema rebels against its trends to form new genres, methods, narrative structures, and more. In Agnès Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7 and Jan Svankmajer’s Food, both films stem from a dissatisfaction of the status quo. Cleo lashes against the commercialisation of a medium that could instead be used extremely effectively as an art form in the wake of war…show more content… However, come the close of the war these films had not yet seen the end of their mass-production as the world continued to come to terms with what the war meant for humanity. Classical Hollywood used storylines that had a clear goal for the protagonist, with little-to-no departure from that main conflict. In Cleo from 5 to 7, there is no goal for Cleo. She is faced with possible death and ends the film with the diagnosis she feared, a clear departure from what Bordwell refers to as “the straight corridor.” Cleo progresses through the film growing as a person and releasing herself from her fears and insecurities. Rather than setting out to better herself from the beginning of the film, this process just… happens. A burst of anger over the new song, fueled by her fear of imperfection, leads her to storm off and give her two hours to herself before going to get her diagnosis. This time alone to let her explore the city is what ultimately changes her regardless that she never had the intention to change. It’s easy to think that Hollywood would simply focus on Cleo’s physical battle with cancer, while Varda instead uses it as a device to explore Cleo as an
