My Life to Live movie review & film summary (1963)

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.

The movie is in 12 sections, each one with titles like an old-fashioned novel. She plays pinball. She works in a record store. She needs money. She tries to steal her flat key from the office of her concierge, but is caught and frog-marched to the street, her arm twisted behind her. She has no home and no money. Is this her fault, or fate? Why did she leave Paul? Has she no feelings for her child? The movie does not say. She is impassive. She goes to see a movie (Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc," about a woman judged by men). She ditches the guy who bought her the ticket, and meets a guy in a bar who wants to take some pictures of her. She's picked up by the cops_a dispute about a "dropped" 1,000-franc note. She goes to a street where prostitutes work. She lets a guy pick her up. She won't let him kiss her.