Product Description
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Vivre sa vie was a turning point for Jean-Luc Godard and remains
one of his most dynamic films, combining brilliant visual design
with a tragic character study. The lovely Anna Karina, Godard's
greatest muse, plays Nana, a young Parisian who aspires to be an
actress but instead ends up a prostitute; her downward spiral is
depicted in a series of discrete tableaux of daydreams and
dances. Featuring some of Karina and Godard's most iconic moments
- from her movie theater vigil with the Passion of Joan of Arc to
her seductive pool-hall strut - Vivre sa vie is a landmark of the
French New Wave that still surprises at every turn.
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Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave were at the height of
their power and creativity when Godard released Vivre Sa Vie
(Living Her Life) in 1962. And watching it again, years later,
instantly transports one to the era where an offhand remark, a
lazy circle of smoke, a sidelong glance, a disaffected
"I don't care about you" could all communicate deep, conflicted
longing, alienation, postwar malaise, and infinite possibility.
In fact, watching Vivre Sa Vie, starring Godard's lovely muse,
Anna Karina, is at once both enervating--and exhilarating. The
film is subtitled Film en Douze Tableaux, and the story shows
Karina as Nana in 12 different short films, snaps of her
lonely, seemingly less life--in scenes that stay with the
viewer for days afterward. In the very first tableau, Nana and a
former lover, Paul (André S. Labarthe), are having a sad,
disjointed conversation in a café--are they breaking up? Getting
back together? The pain and power of the scene lies in its
ambiguousness. And Godard and his brilliant cinematographer,
Raoul Coutard, shoot this initial scene, of the most
conversation between two lovers, entirely from behind them. The
sad, longing remarks, barbs, halfhearted entreaties--they are all
communicated while the viewer looks just at the back of Karina's
sleek black bob and Labarthe's scruffy hair. Only near the end of
that scene, as the viewer is practically craning forward to
connect to the characters, do we get a glimpse of half of a
cheek, one eyebrow. And from this moment, Godard and the cast
have the viewer enthralled. In a later tableau, we watch long,
uninterrupted scenes of The Passion of Joan of Arc--in itself a
treat--and the supposedly disaffected heroine Nana weeping rivers
of tears, silently, in the theater. There are many layers to this
lovely young woman, and each of the 12 snaps of her life
reveals more. Nana's life becomes a tragedy, as she descends into
prostitution--yet along the way, her luminescence is revealed in
small ways. In one scene, she recalls a writing exercise from
when she was a child. "Birds are creatures with an outside, and
an inside," she recites. "When you remove the outside, you see
the inside. When you remove the inside, you see the soul." The
shattering beauty of Vivre Sa Vie is that Godard and Karina allow
us to see the outside, then the inside, and then finally, the
soul. The Criterion Collection edition offers true cinema riches,
especially in an interview with Karina from 1962, several modern
commentaries putting Godard and the film in its historical
context, reportage from early-'60s France on the dire situation
of prostitutes at the time, a booklet of film criticism, and much
more. --A.T. Hurley