www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiXADCFQhjU&t=12s

Jean-Luc Godard can be a real son of of a bitch.

Vivre Sa Vie is about attempting to navigate an unfeeling world. It's about the beautiful Anna Karina and it's about tragedy. It is Godard's Pandora's Box and it unfolds rhythmically in a brilliant parade of pathos. Vivre Sa Vie is a cocoon of complex love. It is Godard studying his lover. He is trying to envelop her in his spirit. He's trying to capture her. He's trying to understand.

The film rests on the natural talents of Anna Karina. It relies solely on the power of her presence. This is not the study of Karina's character, it's an examination of the inexpressible beauty of her. It's about watching…

"I'm telling you my life story—how awful."

I apologize in advance not only for the lengthiness but also for the scattershot nature of this review. My best excuse is that Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa vie is as elliptical as anything by Pound or Eliot and thus makes for a slippery target. Nevertheless I'm given to ramble, and this is my favorite of the twenty Godard films I've seen so far. Many thanks are due for vital contextual assistance from Richard Brody's invaluable biography.

As with any film by Godard, Vivre sa vie is intimately tied to the director's personal life. Early 1962 found Godard's fortunes in a mixed condition. His undervalued third feature A Woman Is a Woman had failed…

Amid the tangle of Godard’s early feature-length output is his fourth film (third release), his cinematic coronet Vivre sa vie—a painterly, tragic composition of floundering actor Nana (Godard’s longtime muse and then-wife Anna Karina), who resorts to prostitution in the wake of domestic abandonment and failed attempts at stardom.

As is customary in the Godard oeuvre, his personal life oozes through the pores of the narrative—here, Nana has left her husband and child following an infidelity, coolly maintaining focus on the status of her non-existent acting career, all while slipping into categorical destitution. Karina had similarly enjoyed an affair and was planning to divorce Godard before filming. They reconciled months later, but the status of their resulting marriage was hardly…

In Vivre Sa Vie we get to know Nana; a woman that dreams of becoming an actress and has one man for every occasion. She believes that mankind is free and are responsible for every action and emotion, and that's a belief that is put to the test as she starts to work as a prostitute...

Vivre Sa Vie has everything I love with Godard films. The melancholy, the fantastic dialogues, the innovative camera work, the social political commentary, beautiful music, beautiful women and last, but not least; tons of references to movies, literature and philosophy. In the case of Vivre sa vie Godard is very straight forward with what he's trying to say, what existential thoughts he's trying to…

Vivre Sa Vie, My Life to Live, and if it's my life to live then it's mine to give.

And so our Nana gives it to a husband she loves but then takes it back when she falls out of it. And why? Because she cannot bear to be so dependent on him and desires to live her life how she wants.

But there-in lies the problem: she can't. With her husband she loses autonomy and without him she cannot survive; she dreams of becoming an actress as she leaves but finds such aspirations unattainable. Hers is a world where women are extensions of men, and attempts to break free and blossom are met with indifference and their withering away.…

Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre Sa Vie bitterly shows the sad reality on what it's like to be a woman in a man's world.

The subject of this film: Anna Karina, Godard's own wife. She plays Nana, a young Parisian woman who leaves her unhappy marriage in an attempt to pursue a life of fame and acknowledgement. But over the course of twelve episodes, we see Nana’s spiralling descent into prostitution instead.

I liked how this film didn't treat its theme of prostitution in overly dramatic fashion; but then again, Vivre sa Vie isn't really about prostitution. This is about Nana and her search for existential truth and happiness.

Throughout its 84 minutes runtime, we are completely drawn to Nana, not just…

76/100

Okay…I admit, this is only my second Godard film. That being said, both films I’ve seen of his (Breathless and now Vivre Sa Vie) have left me feeling a bit cold and uninvolved. With Vivre Sa Vie I feel as if I can admire the parts but not the sum. The acting, dialog, camerawork, story, etc…all pretty wonderful…yet when I step back at the end I don’t feel connected or moved by these characters at all. There is this almost unexplainable coldness to the way Godard portrays the characters, which leaves me feeling like I’m on the outside looking in. It’s hard to put a finger on why or how this happens, maybe it’s just a personal thing and…

“The more we talk, the less the words mean.”

Seriously, can Godard get any better than this? This man is a genius.

I enjoyed every second of this film. It made me feel uncomfortable, represented at times, but most importantly, it gave me the director’s perspective about what he saw of women’s social situation and a full composition of the equivalent of looking but not seeing. The way I look through his camera lens as if it was something that I shouldn’t have seen, and now that I did I must have some sort of feeling or reaction about it.

The montage, photography (simply gorgeous) and interpretations are so so good. Anna Karina did a fantastic job.

The film couldn’t…

The Criterion Challenge 2021

My second Goddard and what a time it was. He's not as wild as he was with Breathless (1960), but thats because this film requires more somberness. The film really takes her perspective seriously and with more nuance than any film I can think of from the era. You can always sort of tell where the film is going and thats due to how fleshed out and real the performance is. Anna Karina does such an incredible job as someone who's trying to be present, but is sadly just taken from bad situation to shit situation all because she's trying to do it alone and in doing so becomes a bit of a bum who's just…

VIVRE SA VIE was Jean-Luc Godard's fourth feature film. The protagonist Nana (Anna Karina) is a young Parisian woman who is not especially bright, but full of life and endowed with great beauty. Unable to make ends meet by working at a record shop, and unable to break into films as she dreams, she starts to work as a prostitute. Postwar French law permitted prostitution, with certain rules and regulations that the film explains in a documentary-like segment. Nana, who yearns to live her life according to her own desires, initially thinks that this new profession has set her free from cares. In fact, Nana's liberation from penury through prostitution only subjects her to new constraints imposed by her pimp…