Vivre Sa Vie

Our DVD Price: £15.99 RRP: £19.99 Save £4.00 (20%)   Availability This product should be despatched within 7 days.  This product will be dispatched from Guernsey. Delivery times   Earn 75 Bonus Points when you buy this product. More info

Film Description

Aka My Life to Live. Godard charts the shocking demise of Nana - a provincial shop assistant who abandons her dream of becoming an actress to drift into a life of prostitution, in a series of twelve tableaux. Starring the radiant Anna Karina, it's daring and experimental in its form and use of sound and editing techniques, and emerges both as a documentary-like exploration of prostitution, and in retrospect serves as an investigation by Godard into his own relationship and marriage to his enigmatic star.

Film Information

DVD Extras

Booklet with director notes and film script.

Technical Details

Film Media

5 Stills

View Stills

Reviews & Articles

Share your thoughts and opinions - write a review

Review by Graeme Hobbs on 22nd October 2003

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.

View more reviews by Graeme Hobbs

Browse all Film Reviews

Article - "Tragic Muses - Monica Vitti and Anna Karina" by Alan Boshier
Wednesday 2nd April 2003

In the golden era of European art cinema, two actresses came to embody the work of the directors that they were associated with on both a personal and professional level to an extent that it is hard to separate one from the other. They are Monica Vitti and Anna Karin...  View article in full

Article - "Jean Luc Godard" by Moviemail
Monday 5th January 2004

For the best part of five decades, Jean-Luc Godard has been producing innovative, challenging and controversial films. The list of his influential titles is peerless. From the nouvelle vague brio of A Bout de Souffle and Bande à Part through to the exquisite beauty o...  View article in full

Collections & Lists

This film is part of the following Film Collections

A Beginner's Guide to Nouvelle Vague

Including: Bande à Part, Bob Le Flambeur, Breathless (Godard, 1959), Eric Rohmer: The Early Works, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Jean-Luc Godard Collection (Volume 1), Jean-Luc Godard Collection (Volume 2), Jules et Jim, Last Year in Marienbad, Masculin Feminin.

View all collections

This film is part of the following Customer Film Lists

Films that shaped my love of cinema by Bill Shelton

These films made a profound effect on me which will never fade

Perfect Ten by Andy Mckay

I just keep coming back to these...

Create your own Film List!

Customers who bought this also bought...

Recommendations from fellow customers

Weekend

by Jean-Luc Godard

Breathless (Godard, 1959)

by Jean-Luc Godard

La Regle du Jeu

by Jean Renoir

Rome, Open City

by Roberto Rossellini

The Leopard

by Luchino Visconti

Other films by...

More films directed by Jean-Luc Godard

Pierrot Le Fou / Weekend - Antoine Duhamel (Soundtrack)

The Ultimate Godard Collection

Breathless (Godard, 1959)

Jean-Luc Godard Collection (Volume 1)

Une Femme est une Femme

View more >

More films starring Anna Karina

Alphaville

by Jean-Luc Godard

Une Femme est une Femme

by Jean-Luc Godard

Bande à Part

by Jean-Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard Collection (Volume 1)

by Jean-Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard: The 60s Collection

by Jean-Luc Godard

View more >

For questions or assistance, call us on (+44) 0844 776 0900 or email on enquiries@moviemail-online.co.uk

© 2004-2007 MovieMail, Ltd., All Rights Reserved. Find out more about MovieMail