Vivre Sa Vie

Godard's matter of fact telling of a woman's tragedy is presented as a film in twelve tableaux. A quote from Montaigne, "Il faut se preter aux autres at se donner a s... more >

Godard's matter of fact telling of a woman's tragedy is presented as a film in twelve tableaux. A quote from Montaigne, "Il faut se preter aux autres at se donner a soi-meme" ("lend yourself to others and give yourself to yourself") increasingly becomes a mockery of Nana's fate. The music by Michel Legrand is cut short over the credits when it seems it might be getting too romantic.


In the first scene we see Nana with Paul in a cafe. Godard does everything to quash our expectations of what we believe we have a right to expect from a film. Their entire conversation is filmed by showing us their backs. When we see that Nana has a Louise Brooks-ish bob of hair, this only irritates us further in not being able to see her face. When they move to a pinball machine, Paul tells her an 8 year old’s story - "A bird is an animal with an inside and an outside, remove the outside, there's the inside; remove the inside and you see the soul" and the camera stays on Nana, watching her reflecting on this, as if she has become aware of her own fate in the film.


The first scene of her life as a prostitute is a desolate affair – the street-level room is unforgiving, the curtains insubstantial, Nana's attempts at smiling and domesticity gauche. We then see a shot of the man’s crotch, his hand in his pocket fingering his money.


When alone in a cafe, and before the meeting with a pimp that will change her life, she suddenly looks into the camera and the music starts playing. It is a look that is pleading and confrontational. She seems to be summoning pride against the pitiless way she is being used in the film. She is helpless and knows it and we can do nothing except watch.


Vivre sa Vie is one of the great 'face' films in which the camera is devoted to capturing every nuance of suffering from a face it loves. This is made explicit with Nana watching Dreyer's Joan of Arc in the cinema, her crying eyes matching those of Renee Falconetti on-screen. It establishes Karina with Brooks and Falconetti as one of the iconic faces of cinema, but here there is no grandeur, and it’s a debased tale for debased times.


The abruptness of the end is a real shock and underlines the lack of worth that Nana now has in others' eyes. She is nothing and suddenly she is dead, FIN. Even the music is cut short after the abrupt end. Any attempt to romanticise her death is flatly quashed, making her linger all the more in our minds, transfixed by those looks directly into the camera.
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DVD Extras

• Booklet with director notes and film script.

Film Details

Cast

Anna Karina

Technical Details