Post by petrolino on Feb 11, 2018 1:33:23 GMT
'My Life To Live' is an intimate character piece inspired by Marcel Sacotte's published case study 'Ou En Est La Prostitution' (1959). It's divided into 12 chapters and tells the story of Nana Kleinfrankenheim (Anna Karina) who leaves her husband Paul (played by filmmaker Andre Labarthe) and her young child hoping to find work as an actress.
'My Life To Live' is lyrical French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's cineliterate diary of a girl lost in Paris. There's some serious narration worked in that plucks facts taken from a contemporary study about the prostitution trade in France. Godard shadows the world of unsigned contracts and medical tests while projecting ideas regarding the lack of health benefits and psychiatric care available. The world's oldest profession has always been a drug assisted profession through various means, be it financial operations, criminal transaction or self-medication. The sights and sounds of brothel life ring loud here, soap, perfume and other essentials never far from reach as Godard lifts the lid on a popular literary facade.
Danish actress Anna Karina cries while attending the pictures in 'My Life To Live'. She's watching one of her countrymens' films made during his time living in France, Carl Theodor Dreyer's silent classic 'The Passion Of Joan Arc' (1928). There are many allusions to the cinema in 'My Life To Live' which is an immersive experience showcasing Karina's many talents (she gets to dance). Godard also touches upon the on-set of a new media age through relative historical terms, photography, recordings and television now regularly entering homes to transmit messages to consumers directly. It's a melancholic film with some beautiful music, including a scene where 'Ma Mome' by Jean Ferrat is played on a jukebox.
Claude Chabrol's 'Les Bonnes Femmes' (1960)
Jacques Rivette's 'Paris Nous Appartiment' (1961)
Jacques Rozier's 'Adieu Philippine' (1962)
Jacques Demy's 'Les Parapluies De Cherbourg' (1964)
Francois Truffaut's 'La Piel Suave' (1964)
Eric Rohmer's 'La Collectionneuse' (1967)
Jean-Luc Godard's 'My Life To Live'
"Jean-Luc Godard is as revolutionary and influential a hinge-figure in cinema as James Joyce was to literature and the cubists were to painting. He saw a rule and broke it. Every day, in every movie. Incorporating what professionals thought of as mistakes (jump-cuts were only the most famous instance), mixing high culture and low without snobbish distinctions, demolishing the fourth wall between viewing himself as a maker of fictional documentaries, essay movies, and viewing his movies as an inseparable extension of his pioneering work as a film critic for Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s."
- John Patterson, The Guardian
- John Patterson, The Guardian
"And now the name Godard inspires a blank face from most filmgoers. Subtitled films are out. Art films are out. Self-conscious films are out. Films that test the edges of the cinema are out. Now it is all about the mass audience: It must be congratulated for its narrow tastes, and catered to. And yet, idly watching television as Aerosmith is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I reflect that if they can be resurrected from the ashes of more radical decades, then why not Godard? I originally think to choose "Breathless" (1960), which fired an opening salvo of the French New Wave, had us all talking about "jump cuts," and made Jean-Paul Belmondo a star. But there is a new DVD of "My Life to Live" ("Vivre Sa Vie"), from 1963. I slip it into the machine, and within five minutes I am so fascinated that I do not move, I do not stir, until it is over. This is a great movie, and I am not surprised to find Susan Sontag describing it as "one of the most extraordinary, beautiful, and original works of art that I know of." It tells the story of Nana, played by Anna Karina, who was Godard's wife at the time. With her porcelain skin, her wary eyes, her helmet of shiny black hair, her chic outfits, always smoking, hiding her feelings, she is a young woman of Paris. The title shots show her in profile and full face, like mug shots, and we will be looking at her for the whole movie, trying to read her, for she reveals nothing willingly. Each shot begins with Michel Legrand music, which stops abruptly, to begin again with the next shot_as if to say, the music will try to explain, but fail. In the next shots we see her from behind, in a cafe, as she talks to a man, Paul. We learn he is her husband, that she has left him and their child, that she has vague plans to go into the movies. Raoul Coutard, the cinematographer who worked side-by-side with Godard during this period, has his camera track back and forth, first behind Nana's head, then Paul's, their faces glimpsed in the mirror. "The film was made by sort of a second presence," Godard said; the camera is not just a recording device but a looking device, that by its movements makes us aware that it sees her, wonders about her, glances first here and then there, exploring the space she occupies, speculating."
- Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times
“His fans want him to keep making the same movies. They want Breathless 2. They can’t bear that he wants to change. I’ve been through that. I get that. All artists get that.”
- Michel Hazanavicius
Anna Karina
- Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times
“His fans want him to keep making the same movies. They want Breathless 2. They can’t bear that he wants to change. I’ve been through that. I get that. All artists get that.”
- Michel Hazanavicius
Anna Karina
'Le Gars De N'importe Ou' - Isabelle Aubret
'My Life To Live' is lyrical French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's cineliterate diary of a girl lost in Paris. There's some serious narration worked in that plucks facts taken from a contemporary study about the prostitution trade in France. Godard shadows the world of unsigned contracts and medical tests while projecting ideas regarding the lack of health benefits and psychiatric care available. The world's oldest profession has always been a drug assisted profession through various means, be it financial operations, criminal transaction or self-medication. The sights and sounds of brothel life ring loud here, soap, perfume and other essentials never far from reach as Godard lifts the lid on a popular literary facade.
"The films that announced the arrival of something truly novel in the nouvelle vague were the feature debuts of François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Les Quatres cents coups (1959) and A bout de souffle (1960). But the films that confirmed the existence of something quite distinctive and wholly individual were Truffaut’s third film, the lyrical, nostalgic, necrophilic Jules et Jim (1961), and Godard’s harsh, self-questioning, didactic fourth movie, Vivre sa vie. Jules et Jim was to become one of the most beloved of French movies, Vivre sa vie one of the most influential. Truffaut and Godard were allies as critics, contributing to Cahiers du cinéma and advocates of the politique des auteurs. Very soon, they were to be rivals as film-makers, and after Vivre sa vie, the final section of which contains an affectionate nod to Jules et Jim as a tracking shot passes a cinema exhibiting the film, there was no possibility of anyone mistaking Truffaut for Godard. Vivre sa vie saw the most thorough application to the cinema of the alienation effect of Bertolt Brecht’s newly fashionable epic theatre, combining cinematic melodrama and detached social analysis to examine the career of Nana, a beautiful Parisian prostitute (Godard’s wife Anna Karina)."
- Philip French, The Guardian
"Well, he asked me to do a little part in Breathless. And he said, “You have to take your clothes off.” And I didn’t want to take my clothes off. Then he said, “But I saw you in a soap [ad] like that!” I did publicity to earn some money back then because I didn’t have any; I was very young. And I told him, “I wasn’t nude. That was your imagination. You just saw a little bit of a shoulder, but I had a big bathing suit underneath.” So I left and, of course, I didn’t do the film. About three or four months later, I got a new telegram from Jean-Luc Godard and the production company asking me to come back for another part that this time might be for the lead. I thought it was a joke, and I showed it to my friends and they said, “You must be crazy; everybody knows him. His film isn’t out yet but it’s called Breathless, and it’s with Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo, and they all say it’s fantastic. You should go and see it.” And I asked them, is [Godard] the guy with dark glasses? Because he’s a very strange guy. I went to see Jean-Luc Godard and he looked at me from up and down and he said, “Okay, you got the part. You can come and sign your contract tomorrow.” Well I said that’s not possible. And he said: “What’s wrong again? The first time you said you didn’t want to take your clothes off.” And so I asked if I would have to take my clothes off for this movie. “No, no, it’s a political film,” he said, “You can just come tomorrow and sign the contract.” And I said, “I can’t.” And he asked what was wrong again. And I explained that I was underage and you had to be 21 to sign a contract; I was 18 and a half. And he said it wouldn’t be a problem, I could just come with my mother or father to sign the contract. And I said, “I can’t!” “Oh, la, la, what’s wrong again?” “My mother lives in Denmark in Copenhagen!” He said, “That’s not a problem, phone your mother here from the office, and ask her to come right away.” So I called and said, “Mommy, I’m doing a political film with Jean-Luc Godard. You have to come and sign the contract.” She thought I was lying, so she hung up the phone. But then she came the next day, even though she had never taken an airplane in her life. She came to Paris and she signed my contract."
- Anna Karina, Vogue
- Philip French, The Guardian
"Well, he asked me to do a little part in Breathless. And he said, “You have to take your clothes off.” And I didn’t want to take my clothes off. Then he said, “But I saw you in a soap [ad] like that!” I did publicity to earn some money back then because I didn’t have any; I was very young. And I told him, “I wasn’t nude. That was your imagination. You just saw a little bit of a shoulder, but I had a big bathing suit underneath.” So I left and, of course, I didn’t do the film. About three or four months later, I got a new telegram from Jean-Luc Godard and the production company asking me to come back for another part that this time might be for the lead. I thought it was a joke, and I showed it to my friends and they said, “You must be crazy; everybody knows him. His film isn’t out yet but it’s called Breathless, and it’s with Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo, and they all say it’s fantastic. You should go and see it.” And I asked them, is [Godard] the guy with dark glasses? Because he’s a very strange guy. I went to see Jean-Luc Godard and he looked at me from up and down and he said, “Okay, you got the part. You can come and sign your contract tomorrow.” Well I said that’s not possible. And he said: “What’s wrong again? The first time you said you didn’t want to take your clothes off.” And so I asked if I would have to take my clothes off for this movie. “No, no, it’s a political film,” he said, “You can just come tomorrow and sign the contract.” And I said, “I can’t.” And he asked what was wrong again. And I explained that I was underage and you had to be 21 to sign a contract; I was 18 and a half. And he said it wouldn’t be a problem, I could just come with my mother or father to sign the contract. And I said, “I can’t!” “Oh, la, la, what’s wrong again?” “My mother lives in Denmark in Copenhagen!” He said, “That’s not a problem, phone your mother here from the office, and ask her to come right away.” So I called and said, “Mommy, I’m doing a political film with Jean-Luc Godard. You have to come and sign the contract.” She thought I was lying, so she hung up the phone. But then she came the next day, even though she had never taken an airplane in her life. She came to Paris and she signed my contract."
- Anna Karina, Vogue
"When you become older, the analysis of the structure is part of the novel itself. It’s the difference between James Joyce’s Ulysses and Erle Stanley Gardner. In Perry Mason the mystery is only the mystery of describing, [whereas with Joyce] the mystery of the writing itself is part of the novel. The observer and the universe are part of the same universe. It’s what science discovered at the beginning of this century, when they say you can’t tell where an atomic particle is. You know where they are, but not their speed; or you know their speed but not their place, because it depends on you. The one who describes is part of the description."
- Jean-Luc Godard, Film Comment
Jean-Luc Godard & Anna Karina
L'Amerique' - France Gall
- Jean-Luc Godard, Film Comment
Jean-Luc Godard & Anna Karina
L'Amerique' - France Gall
Danish actress Anna Karina cries while attending the pictures in 'My Life To Live'. She's watching one of her countrymens' films made during his time living in France, Carl Theodor Dreyer's silent classic 'The Passion Of Joan Arc' (1928). There are many allusions to the cinema in 'My Life To Live' which is an immersive experience showcasing Karina's many talents (she gets to dance). Godard also touches upon the on-set of a new media age through relative historical terms, photography, recordings and television now regularly entering homes to transmit messages to consumers directly. It's a melancholic film with some beautiful music, including a scene where 'Ma Mome' by Jean Ferrat is played on a jukebox.
French New Wave ~ Youth Rebellion
Claude Chabrol's 'Les Bonnes Femmes' (1960)
Jacques Rivette's 'Paris Nous Appartiment' (1961)
Jacques Rozier's 'Adieu Philippine' (1962)
Jacques Demy's 'Les Parapluies De Cherbourg' (1964)
Francois Truffaut's 'La Piel Suave' (1964)
Eric Rohmer's 'La Collectionneuse' (1967)
Jean-Luc Godard's 'My Life To Live'
'Une Echarpe, Une Rose' - Chantal Goya
'10 Great French New Wave Films' at the British Film Institute
'10 Great French New Wave Films' at the British Film Institute
