Self-Portrait in a Shattered Lens

VIVRE SA VIE: A Film in 12 Scenes / Film en douze tableaux
(Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1962, 85 mins.)

Godard spent entire films sending semaphore-like messages about
the corruption of Western consumer society, but My Life to Live
communicates more, and without a single quote from Chairman Mao.
-- Glenn Erickson, DVD Savant

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

When people say they like Jean-Luc Godard's 1960s work, what they usually
mean is that they like Godard in combination with actress Anna Karina and cin-
ematographer Raoul Coutard. To be fair, they may also be thinking about Jean-
Paul Belmondo (Breathless, Pierrot le Fou) or Jean-Pierre Léaud (Masculin Féminin, La Chinoise), but Vivre Sa Vie belongs as much to Karina as to Godard. If not more so.

Though Karina still had a career after her personal and professional break from
the director—they married just after 1961's A Woman Is a Woman and divorced
during 1965's Pierrot le Fou—she never hit the same heights again, though the
one-time model did go on to work with such major talents as Rainer Werner Fass-
binder, Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Rivette, Agnès Varda, and Luchino Visconti.

Arguably, Godard peaked during the same period, 1961-1967, in which they made eight films together. That isn't to dismiss his work with other actresses in the dec-
ades to come, but it's the '60s, i.e. the Karina Era, that secured his reputation.

In Godard biographer Richard Brody's essay "Self-Portrait in a Shattered Lens," which accompanies the Criterion Collection DVD, he writes, "Pierrot Le Fou was an angry accusation against Anna Karina, and a self-pitying keen at how she destroyed him and his work." I couldn't say whether Godard signs off on that reading, but Karina offers nothing but praise when she speaks about her former spouse in interviews.

Luc Lagier's revealing 2007 documentary Godard, L'Amour, La Poésie also comes
with the Pierrot DVD. In it, Karina explains, "I can't speak badly of him! He was
my teacher, my love, my husband, my Pygmalion. He taught me everything."

Though Pierrot le Fou ends in death and destruction, Vivre Sa Vie is a more somber affair (further, Coutard shot it in black and white rather than Technicolor). Godard disorients the audience from the start with backlit close-ups of Karina before revealing anything about her character. After the credit sequence, Nana (Karina) parts from her husband, Paul (André Labarthe), and by extension, their child.

Godard keeps the Brechtian distance going by shooting the scene from the back,
but the eeriest part is that they speak to each other as director and actress (or fath-
er and daughter). Paul accuses her of "parroting" everything he says, while Nana claims he never lets her speak for herself. Though it's rarely wise to read too much biography into a fiction film, Godard isn't exactly playing his cards close to his chest.

As it turns out, Nana would prefer to act, but works instead in a record store. Deeply in debt, she loses her apartment, but doesn't tell Paul or ask to borrow any money.

Instead, she drowns her sorrows in a screening of Carl Theodor Dreyer's La Pas-
sion de Jeanne d'Arc, during which a man puts his arm around her shoulder. He
bought her ticket, so she accepts the gesture, but refuses to allow him to go home with her. She has her standards, but as her situation becomes more precarious,
they melt away. (Interestingly, French-Canadian helmer Léa Pool uses Vivre Sa
Vie in 1999's Emporte-moi, AKA Set Me Free, much as Godard uses Jeanne d'Arc.)

One afternoon, while walking down a Parisian boulevard frequented by street-
walkers, another man asks Nana, "How about it?" Pause. "Oui," she res-
ponds quietly, and a prostitute is born. (Pool's underage protagonist
tries the same thing, but is prevented from taking the plunge.)

Godard, by way of Coutard, continues to alternate between back shots, fade-to-
blacks, close-ups in which Karina stares into the camera—like Maria Falconetti in
the Dreyer film or Jean Seberg in Breathless—and more neorealist-style material.

Later, another trick accuses Nana of "parroting," which brings up an interesting point. Though sometimes accused of misogyny (most recently by Richard Brody), Godard takes this parade of judgmental men to task. If Nana isn't a heroine on the order of Joan of Arc, he's still in her corner. No wonder Susan Sontag loved this film. Whether it qualifies as feminist or not is open to debate, but I submit that it's not misogynist.

Further, many critics feel Karina gives her best performance in Vivre Sa Vie. I haven't seen enough of her post-Godard work to say for sure, but it's the best of the films I've seen, and she was never a slouch in the acting department. It's worth adding that the Denmark-born Hanne Karen Blarke Bayer was never a slouch in the sing-
ing or dancing departments either. Though she doesn't sing here as she does in Pierrot le Fou, she does dance to a jukebox, anticipating 1964's Band of Outsiders.

So, Vivre Sa Vie isn't a total downer (Michel Legrand's subtle score, which plays
only during the chapter headings, adds some welcome relief). A melodrama dres-
sed in new wave garb, the film proves Godard had a soft side. Karina would contin-
ue to bring that softness to the silver screen, while her ex-husband and greatest director would succumb to the coldness that always attached itself to his work.

Part of the retrospective "Godard's '60s," Vivre Sa Vie, in a new 35mm print,
plays SIFF Cinema through 8/28. This title is not currently available on DVD.
(Incidentally, I suspect Fatih Akin used its structure as a model for the discrete scenes in The Edge of Heaven, which continues at The Varsity.) SIFF Cinema is loc-
ated at 321 Mercer St. in Marion Oliver McCaw Hall. For more information, please
click here or call 206-633-7151. Images from Roger Ebert and OutNow!