Vivre Sa Vie: Film En Douze Tableaux
(My Life To Live)
1962
After three decidedly crazy ventures, Godard shuts the mouths of critics with his next film My Life to Live (1962). More sober than all of his previous ventures, Vivre Sa Vie follows the life of a wannabe-actress who takes up casual prostitution to make ends meet. With significantly long shots that are as intriguing as his jump cuts, Godard organically captures the quotidian and empty life of his protagonist. My Life to Live is probably one of the few Godard films to get universal acclaim. Supposedly one of the most distressing shoot for the crew, especially for Anna, because of Godard’s sporadic fits of anger and frustration.
My Life To Live (1962)
The film is divided into 12 segments each of which consists of an encounter that Nana has with the people she meets. Godard employs a range of film techniques – Drama, cinema vérité, newsreel and documentary – without relinquishing the staple film references along the way. Probably the most famous scene in the film, Nana’s rendezvous with Dreyer’s hypnotic classic The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) encompasses everything the film stands for. We see a shattered Nana breakdown at the trial of Joan of Arc as Godard replicates the extreme close-up, definitely as homage to Dreyer too, as if suggesting that Nana herself is like Joan of Arc – tried by the cruel society forcing her to recant her belief of a respectable life.
Godard studies his main character with religious focus. I don’t know what was running through his mind while filming Anna at various distances and angles, but I’m guessing that whatever is presented in the film is a manifestation of their personal relationship and how Godard perceived Karina. Godard’s fascination with prostitution begins here and would go on to take up multiple meanings in his future films, especially the political ones. And there is also the typically self-indulgent Godard’s philosophy that occupies a whole chapter towards the end of the film.
The Seventh Art 
December 5, 2008 at 3:50 am
The greatest painting are portraits. Look at Velasquez. The painter who wants to show only the exterior of people; and yet, there is something else going on. It’s very mysterious.
Godard
Srikanth, you’re spot on regarding the nature of the film in your final paragraph. First before we look at the film it’s important to understand few important events in his life.
1) Godard personal life was in shambles
2) Karmitz who had passed out from IDHEC (now LA FEMIS) one of the best film schools in the world and worked as Godard assistant. So before the shoot of this film, Godard asked him to lend some technical books from his days at IDHEC, he said:
“I have to learn some’, He thought that the camera moved too much in breathless”
3)Godard was troubled by the recent attack on the collapse and failure of the new wave filmmakers, and their failure to sustain the sudden attacks.
It’s finally through My Life to Live that Godard found himself sitting and viewing the surrounding from the first-storey of his new developed aesthetics. The seeds that he had been sowing for years- through criticism and filmmaking that proved a solid foundation and school of learning. If Breatheless, was born out of the desire to shot and capture life before it slips away… My Life to Live originated form the same principle. The only difference lay in the fact that, in the former the ‘chance’ became the definitive, but in the latter the definitive became the chance.
My Life to Live gives rise to ‘Godardian expressions’ that has continued to evolve ever since, but this was the first sign of him condensing a platform where his ideas of montage and long takes worked in conjunction to give a glimpse of classical construction. A glimpse, because Godard, unlike, most filmmaker’s constructs his ‘ outside’- the bird metaphor, in the same tradition of classical cinema, to reveal the ‘ inside’ but in the former it offers a space of critical thinking but in the latter it makes the drama a spectacle.
Looking at My Life to Live one can easily call it a melodrama; irrespective of, the fact that the mise-en-scene is antithesis to drama and the ‘melo’ the music when played moves with the image, but is disrupted before it would grasp the viewer and sweep him/her with emotion. For example, the opening of the film which begins with music, but Godard abruptly cuts it short, so that the ‘image’ held alone to be seen, before the music picks up again. Between this idea of switch off and on, Godard offers us a critical space: to see, to feel, and then to see again. The film is an ‘attempt’ a deconstructed look at the genre, although it’s a woman driven film, and the visual expression offers an imperative mood that catches our attention. But, Godard’s Brechitan influence gives the film its final form and takes the film away from the genre itself.
Godard once said, “Cinema is not about abstract expression, but the phrasing of moments”, and this is exactly what makes this film shine. If the opening of the film makes us inquisitive to ‘look’, alert to ‘hear’ and attentive to ‘watch’; the film thence follows gives us an emotion that one can feel when the film closes. The emotion does not follow because one is guided to do so, but comes through our own reworking of ‘what is told’, ‘what is shown, and ‘what we accompany’. And this is exactly why Godard’s achieves a fine balance between form and content in this film.
If Godard keeps us a distance through his framing (balancing character off-center, edge of frame, offering only their back) it’s the ‘words’ that offer an important path in the narrative- a point of convergence that finally meets its end through the narration of the text of ‘Oval Portrait’. But Godard does not become a slave to the words that are spoken in the film or narrated, because the text like in conventional plot structure, does not attach itself to the image or sound in the film, and follow the narrative. It’s an indication to the path, but not the path itself, so the opening tableaux denotes but does not impose upon the image like most movies are shot.
There is an interesting element that one cannot ignore about Godard are his preferences to shoot on two ratios: 1:33:1(Old Studio Ratio) and 2:35:1(Cinemascope), both this ratio seemed to be his favorite. There is a reason, since the former offer him the ‘height’ and frame to compose images that resembled ‘tableaux’ ala painting. The latter offered a breadth where he could associate ‘landscape’ with subjects that beautifully come to the screen in Contempt. My Life to Live was shot on 1:33:1 and it does affect the overall nature and outlook of the film. Godard who constructs this movie through a breakdown of ‘ montage’(shot/reverse shot), lateral tracking and shoot/block technique these aspects of camera movement and editing technique offer the ‘ energy’, the ‘ distance’ and the slight awkwardness to the image. For example, in the scene with Brice Parain and Karina the ASL (average shot length) of the shot/reverse is appears slightly quicker than the rest of the film. The basic reason is that it helps the ‘ awkwardness’ or naive ness or boredom that Karina gets while talking to him it even gives the ‘ audience’ a coup d’oeil into her feeling a little lost to what he is saying. Similarly, the Lateral tracking in the film, that works as in opposition to the classical tracking of depth and the composition in depth. Here the film is flat, and the tracks makes the image flatter, so it appears one is moving from tableaux to the next without being affect by the emotion. Although, he does in a very classical manner sometime move the camera close to Karina in conversation too look at her, tease her or allow her to break the fourth wall.
Anna Karina performance in the film is remarkable and yeah Godard takes his cinephile love to a new height with the brilliant shot/reverses hot from Dreyer’s Jeanne D’ Arc and Karina. But that is what Godard and stuff where made of. Tableau No-8 is special and different form every other tableau in the movie, not only the whole tableau is shot in a manner that resembles the cinema of Bresson; with it’s emphasis on the hands and gestures, and it does move laterally to the voice-over narration that gives an ethnological account of the social and political scenario and lives of Prostitutes in general. Personally, this is one of rare works of Godard where form and content though on the opposite scales works to create magic, an emotional connection to a large audience. Beside, words have always been important for Godard, the Montagine quote is a direct allusion. Godard dialogues are form of quotes, ideas that he read and rephrased but definitely an influence from somewhere, it can be anywhere (the evidence present in Pierrot Le Fou) that is the reason he deeply admired Montagine who wrote in quotes.
Thanks for the kind words Bikas and Srikanth. It’s strange but my love affair with Godard started in my first year at college. The first Godard movie I saw was Eloge d lamour( I feel in love with colors) and moved backwards, and took a vow that by the time I pass out from college I should have seen and read everything on him. Sadly, neither of which happened, and I’m ‘hopefully’ going to graduate college, that too seems dark.
But I’m happy; nonetheless, because in the days when everyone is becoming a specialist of something, it’s good and healthy to be a general practitioner.:)
Godard who shot this movie with a very, very small budget asked Rossellini about how to go about making a film, this is what he had to say:
“ When you get money to make a film, do you have to spend it all? …. And Robert told me: “The best way is to make films that take places in the Middle Ages. During the week, everyone is dressed in potato sacks with two holes for the arms and a hole for the head. Above all, don’t make films that take place on Sunday, because that’s when they wore nice clothing. The rest keep yourself and your family”
Elia Kazan came to watch Godard shoot a scene and spoke to Suzanne Schiffman between takes:
It has a very long take, a fixed-focus shot. The came didn’t move, the actors enter and left the frame, they continued acting and talking outside the frame. Kazan asked me,” Which angle will shoot the action from next?” No, he never shoots a scene from more than one angle.” Kazan didn’t understand.
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December 5, 2008 at 7:59 am
The last two accounts were hilarious…
And man, was that detailed. Makes a fantastic essay on the film. So many unseen aspects of the film were brought to light there and is now helping me to ruminate on what I saw in the film. All these “essays” are going to be vital when I revisit works of Godard. Thanks again Nitesh. I appreciate it very much.
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December 5, 2008 at 10:04 am
As good as Godard’s earlier three films are, to me this is his first true masterpiece. The Dreyer homage here is proof positive, if any was needed, that for Godard his constant use of homage, reference, quotations, genre, etc. is not just a stylistic trick, but is in fact the substance and emotional bedrock of his films. The scene with Karina is easily as moving and potent as the original it references, with Joan’s suffering recast into a different story and different circumstances. Nana is a martyr, not to religion, but to the oppression of the controlling classes, which subjugate the poor and especially women, making even their sexuality into a commodity. This makes Vivre sa vie notable for, among its many other virtues, being the first Godard film to have a real sustained socialist outlook.
He’d pick up the theme of prostitution again many more times, most notably in 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her and in the hilarious scene with Isabelle Huppert as a prostitute in Sauve qui peut (la vie), which is the ultimate representation of this idea of sex as a fetishized commodity. Speaking of which, I really hope as you get into the later days of this month that you get a chance to cover a bunch of Godard’s 70s, 80s and 90s films, which as a whole body of work I prefer even to the 60s work.
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December 5, 2008 at 10:26 am
Hi Ed. Thanks again.
As you pointed out, the scene in Everyman for Himself is as funny as it is shattering And 2 or 3 portrays the profession as if it is a commonplace job and as if people have become apathetic towards the social conditions that give rise to it.
Will try to cover as many films in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s as possible. And if some vital films are left out, will cover those in the flashback series too.
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May 13, 2011 at 8:33 pm
And I thought I was the sniesble one. Thanks for setting me straight.
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July 4, 2009 at 9:56 pm
[…] Take a look at the narrative structure of the film, whose episodic nature and style reminds us of My Life to Live (1962) than any other Godard film. Like the French director, Golestan lets his script freewheel all […]
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October 3, 2009 at 12:25 pm
[…] to cheesy in-movie documentaries (narrated by Samuel L. Jackson), again reminding us of Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie (1962) where the director seamlessly includes a mini documentary that lists down statistics and […]
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January 24, 2010 at 9:24 pm
[…] explored the possibility of life merging with art) that comes to mind watching Shirin is Godard’s My Life to Live (1962), in which Godard provides a close up of Nana (Anna Karina) weeping while watching Dreyer’s […]
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