VIVRE SA VIE (MY LIFE TO LIVE)
Profile of Nana’s face (Anna Karina). A brief few bars of gently melancholic music (Michael LeGrand), which stops. Silence. Then switch to frontal close-up and the music again. Which again stops after a few bars. Hold on the close-up. Now Nana’s right profile, barest outline of her nose and mouth. Again the music, which stops after a few bars. Hold on the close-up.
“Lend yourself to others and give yourself to yourself”. Montaigne.
A CAFE – NANA WANTS TO LEAVE PAUL – THE PINBALL MACHINE
She’s asked if she “really likes the guy”. Her back is to us, only a blur of her face in the mirror opposite her and the counter at which she sits. She’s not sure what she thinks. She’s asked if he has more money than him and Nana repeats numerous times “What do you care?” in different tones, saying she wants to be precise and doesn’t know the best way to say it. The man asks her if she ever talks about anything but herself. She says he’s horrible and he says no, he’s sad. She says she’s not sad, that she’s horrible. He tells her not to parrot lines, that this isn’t a stage.
“You never do as I ask. You always want me to do as you want. I’m tired of it. I want to die,” she says. He tells her it’s parrot talk. She says he’s the one who’s cruel.
Return to the music as we now have a back shot of the man. He says it’s not true. She says yes it is, as when she asked him to introduce her to “that man”. She says, “You did it on purpose.” He admits he did. She says she despises him and will only betray him again.
The more they talk, the less the words mean, she is saying as the camera returns to her back, and that if she makes it on the stage it won’t be thanks to him. He tells her acting isn’t everything. She says someone may discover her some day and we notice that the way she holds her cigarette suddenly seems to have changed, becoming affected. The camera returns to the man’s back, he saying, no, never give up, that he hasn’t given up on music either, unlike her English lessons.
“I’m not giving up. That guy is going to take pictures of me. I might make it into films.”
“That’ll be the day.”
Return to Nana’s back. She says he says he loves her but doesn’t think of her as anyone special. Whereas she no longer loves him but believes him to be special. He says she’s leaving him because he’s poor, and she says that perhaps she is. She asks him for some photos and he says he’ll have them at the end of the week.
She says, “Is he all right? Is he eating well?”
The man says he has an earache but is all right. They are talking about their child, one realizes. He asks what she’s doing for work. She says she’s selling records and asks if she can borrow 2000 francs. He says no. She says his parents must be glad she’s gone, but he says they liked her. She asks for a coin so they can play pin ball and now we see their faces in profile. He tells her about some essays his father is grading from his students. One written by an 8 year girl describes a bird, how it has an inside and an outside. Remove the outside and you see the inside. Remove the inside and you have the soul.
The range of of grays is beautiful, which is the way it is with Godard’s films and Raoul Coutard’s cinematography which is muted and naturalistic, and yet the whites sparkle and light flashes, comes and gos, dances here and there on things so that one realizes how downplayed this normal play of light is in Hollywood cinematography. In the forming of a “look” it locks elbows with the manner in which the camera tracks with the performer but not exactly, leaving room in the frame for set and surrounding action so that the story is as much place as it is person and the backdrop more complicit in experience than in many films. There is a heavy background noise quotient visually, but a balance is struck so that the primary notes are every overwhelmed. Instead they are supported.
THE RECORD SHOP — TWO THOUSAND FRANCS — NANA LIVES HER LIFE.
Silent shot of a busy street. Now inside the record store, Nana at work. A man wants Judy Garland. No they don’t have it. A guitar recording by Raphael Romeo? Nana goes to look for it. She asks another woman if Rita is still away and tells her that Rita owes her 2000 francs. She asks another woman for a loan of 2000 francs and is turned down. Done with the customer Nana returns to speak to a girl about a story that girl is reading in a magazine. The camera pans to the street, showing ordinary people passing as the woman reads,
“…As one who lives intensely, logically, you…” I interrupted him, “You attach too much importance to logic. For a few seconds I was filled with a bitter sense of triumph. Forgotten, my broken heart. Forgotten too the need to put on a brave face. Yes, a distinctly elegant way of escaping this dilemma.”
[clear]
Fade to black.
THE CONCIERGE — PAUL –THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC — A JOURNALIST.
Nana begins several times to enter through a doorway into an unidentified area, all we see is the cavernous dark and the light through the open door, her passing through, stopping, running out. Then a shot of a woman hiding in a court yard. Then an overhead shot of Nana running through the courtyard for what we realize is the office of the building in which she lives. The landlady catches her. Nana begs for the key. The landlady says no. Nana grabs the key and makes a dash for the door of her building and a man grabs her and forces her away.
Nana meets Paul on the street. She looks at the pictures he hands her and says the boy doesn’t look like her at all, but like him, which seems a rejection of the child, if she cannot find her face in his own. She shows so little connection to the child that it is nearly impossible to feel any judgment of her for leaving him behind with her old life.
Paul invites her to eat but she says she has a movie she wants to see.
“Jeanne d’Arc” in neon against black.
Next a broad expanse of black, interior of the theater, and Nana’s profile at the bottom of the screen. A man’s arm reaches around to embrace her shoulders. They are watching Dreyer’s 1928 Passion of Joan of Arc.
“We are to prepare you for death.”
“So soon?” Jeanne says. “What death?”
“At the stake.”
[clear]
Front view of Nana watching, her eyes filling with tears but her face otherwise expressionless.
“How can you still believe you were sent by god?”
“God knows where he leads us, but we know the path of our journey. Yes, I’m his child.”
“And your deliverance?”
“It will be my martyrdom. Death.”
[clear]
Close-up again on Nana’s face, the tears finally dropping down her cheeks, mirroring and responding to Jeanne’s gleaming tears. It is the first glimpse of what seems to be real emotion, for otherwise Nana’s exterior has been much like any of the surfaces of the objects in any of the scenes. A table is a stand-in for a table and though we recognize through design it is a table, it only becomes a table when used as a table. Whatever Nana may be, she’s waiting for realization, which she thinks will come on the stage, real life beginning on a date when the stars align and she springs into existence fully formed, as Minerva from Jupiter’s head. Whatever she is in the meanwhile is a parentless spirit. And here, even when she cries, one can’t be entirely sure that she is actually crying and not trying on a role. There remains that question of whether or not Nana is parroting what has impressed her, but one feels she has been touched.
“Death.”
[clear]
Nana leaving the theater with the man, he attempts to kiss her but she pulls away, says she’d already said good-bye. He says that he had bought her ticket. “Too bad,” she says and slips through a door into a modern restaurant that is all plate glass windows and little cafe tables. Black has predominated the last couple of scenes. Now instead we have the light floor of the restaurant, the light tables and chairs against the black of night outside the windows. Nana smiles, approaching a man sitting at the counter. “Didn’t we have a date?” she asks. He notes yes, and that she’s late. She says usually she’s punctual. “Eleven at night is very late,” he says. Nana replies that she’d thought he’d forgotten too. He asks if the man was a boyfriend. She says he was a brother. “You have many brothers?” She says she has five brothers and three sisters. She asks if the red car is his? Yes. A Jaguar? No, it’s an Alfa Romeo. Is she interested in cars? No, she doesn’t know a thing about them. He asks about the photographs and she says she already told him she was willing. He asks how about now? She asks if he really thinks she’ll get into films. He says yes and hands her a composite sheet of someone else, something similar to what he’d like to do with her. He says you send them out to people in films and a few days later they phone. When she says she’s shy about undressing he says it’s nothing. She asks for a loan of 2000 francs and he says he hasn’t got it. He stands to leaves. She asks about the pictures. “You’ll stay with me then?” “Oui.”
THE POLICE. NANA IS QUESTIONED.
Nana’s face in dark shadow against light entering through a window behind. She’s giving police information on her.
“Well, I was walking down the street and I saw a woman buying a magazine…she took money out of her bag…she didn’t notice she’d dropped 1000 francs…I put my foot on her 1000 francs, she left…” She has difficulty continuing, then adds the woman came and looked at her in the eyes a long time and asked for her money back and she gave it to her. The policeman asks why the woman brought the charge and Nana says she doesn’t know but it was mean of her. The policeman asks if she has friends in Paris she can go to? She says yes, sometimes. Boys? Yes. He asks why doesn’t she ask them for an advance. She says that she already has. Her face is in dark shadow but now we have a glint of her eyes, which are moist. He asks her what she’s going to do and she says she doesn’t know. Turns her face in profile. The footage stutters. Periodically, the footage stutters as if a brief second or two has been lost. “I…is someone else.”
Much of the footage from the opening run of credits recalls this scene but is not from it.
It is a turning point.
THE BOULEVARDS, THE FIRST MAN, THE ROOM
The street as the melodic, somber music plays. Then the scene goes silent, the camera recording the prostitutes. Black. Then Nana walking the street past a wall on which graffiti is painted, passing by one of the prostitutes, looking across the street at another who stands outside, “MAILLOT PALACE, TOUS LES JOURS, PERMANENT…” “STATIONNER DEVANT LE CINEMA”. Fade to black.
Immediately back to Nana walking, passing by “SORTIE DE GROSCAMIONS.” A man passing by asks “How about it?” She looks at him as if it is something to still think about, whether or not she will do this? They enter a building and given a choice of room 27 or 28 she selects room 27. They go to the room where she stands patting her hair uncertainly. She closes the drapes, sits on the bed and applies lipstick. He asks her how much and she says she doesn’t know, it’s up to him. He says he doesn’t know. She asks for 4000 francs. He gives her the money and asks for 1000 in change. She says she doesn’t have it. All right, but he says she’ll have to take everything off.
She looked like she had mustered some courage, or bravado, or resignation. As he attempts to kiss her on the mouth they wrestle, she fiercely resisting the kiss. We glimpse her face and see she is frightened. Fade to black.
MEETING YVETTE, A CAFE IN THE SUBURBS, RAOUL, GUNSHOTS ON THE STREET
Nana outside again. She passes by Yvette and they exchange greetings, Yvette saying she hardly recognized her. She asks Yvette why she’s there, to dance? Shall they have a drink? How’s Raymond? YVette says she’d like to get away, escape to the tropics. Nana says that escape is a pipe dream. They enter a cafe, a man playing pinball by the door. They take a seat at a booth. Yvette goes to the man at the pinball machine and kisses him, walks off and he stares after her, at Nana. She returns and tells how she and Raymond had moved to Brest but then she never saw him. She would take the children out. She worried about how he earned his money, then after three weeks he never came back and she had to manage on her own with the children her mother-in-law didn’t want to look after. She became a prostitute. Two years later she went to the movies and saw Raymond in an American film.
“And now?”
Things are fine.
“But not much fun.”
“Depressing, but it’s not my fault.”
Nana, though having cynically said earlier that escape is a pie dream, dreamily replies that she thinks we’re freely responsible for our actions. That if she’s unhappy, she’s responsible. “I forget I’m responsible, but I am. I told you there’s no escape. Everything is good. You only have to take an interest in things. After all, things are what they are. A message is a message. Plates are plates. Men are men. And life is life.” She laughs.
Yvette says the man she greeted wants to meet her. Does she mind? No. Nana looks up at the camera, her eyes uncertain again, then smiles as the music begins.
The camera is on another man and a woman at a table. Perhaps they are married. Perhaps they are lovers. The song on the jukebox plays.
“She’s no film star, this baby of mine. She works on the factory assembly line. We live in one room down by the railway track with a lovely view of the warehouse out back.”
Back to Nana, the look on her face inscrutable, perhaps lowering into cynicism. The song continuing, “No Riviera for us on our holidays. No family with a fond Daddy who plays.”
Now Nana lifts her head to look at someone and the cynicism seems to fall away, a dreamy trace of lightness filling her face.The camera focuses on a man beside the jukebox listening to the music. It is this man, who selected the song, who she is watching. “But the light that shines in my baby’s eyes is more to me than the stars in the sky, and when the rest of the town starts to doze, the late evening sun in our window glows.” He sits. Above his head is a “Joker” sign. Another sign on the window reads, “Hotel de France, BAL, Roger Helie.”
She is still watching him, but a subtle frown reappers. “We whisper in the secrecy of our four walls. And make love together as darkness falls.”
(“Where did they get these songs?” my husband asks. I reply that I think it’s kind of like the French version of Country music.)
The song ends. The camera is on Yvette and the man at the pinball machine. He asks if Nana is a lady or a tramp and Yvette shrugs. It’s said to insult her and that if she’s a tramp she’ll become angry and if she’s a lady she’ll smile.
The man goes to the table. He says he knows her. He saw her three months before. She denies it. He says it was on Boulevard Saint Germaine looking at photos. She agrees. “Why did you deny it? You parrot everything. You’re ridiculous.” Paul had also told Nana she parroted everything. Her expression becomes uncertain. He continues, “What are you looking at me like that? You look stupid and your hair looks ridiculous.” She laughs and he kisses her hand and steps away saying he has something to tell her. She glances in his notebook which has in it the names of his girls. Liliane, Yvette, Germaine, Monique. Suddenly, the sound of a machine gun in that unrealistic way Godard has of splicing in violence. The machine gun shatters the realism. Nana stands and hurries to put on her jacket but her look is too placid. The camera pans to outside, stuttering with the blasts of the machine gun, and a man with a machine gun is seen on the street approaching a man pressed against the wall, while another man covered with blood runs into the restaurant. “My eyes,” he says, Nana passing, almost no expression on her face. She steps outside and runs as police appear on the scene.
THE LETTER — RAOUL AGAIN — CHAMPS ELYSEES.
Nana is writing a woman, saying that a friend who worked for her gave her the address and that she would like to work for her. She gives her age as 22, that she thinks she is pretty, her height is…
Nana stands and measures herself.
Her height is 69 meters. Her hair is short but grows quickly. She’s enclosing a photo…
A man’s hand presses down on the paper. “So it’s you again?” she says, smiling. This man could be either the man who was at the juke box or Raoul, we don’t know yet. We don’t see the man’s face as he sits opposite her, saying, “The classic letter.” She asks how he found her and he says he followed her there. She says he has nerve, and he says no, she’s beautiful. By now Nana’s face is completely eclipsed by his head so we don’t see his face, don’t see her face, but we do see her form has stilled, apparently taken or taken aback. The camera continues to pan and we see her face again against the backdrop of the street. She says he disappears quickly. That he’d disappeared quickly the day the crook was shot. He says it was political stuff, they weren’t crooks. She says she didn’t mean to imply he wasn’t brave, just making conversation. He looks at her letter. “What do you think of me?” she asks. He says he thinks she’s very good, that she has great goodness in her eyes. She says it’s a funny thing to say. The camera continues to pan back and forth so sometimes we see her and sometimes we don’t. She says she hadn’t expected a catholic answer and what she meant was did he place her in a special category of women? He asks if she likes being special. She says yes. Why? He says there are three types of girls. Some have one expression,some have two, and some have three. He asks if the address is from Yvette. He says he can help her earn more. She says she is willing but there seems a slight choke in her voice and her eyes gleam with water though her face is steeled.
The camera has moved to the side and we see finally Raoul’s face, the pimp who had been playing pinball. He asks her why she hasn’t tried to get into movies and she says that two years before she had and had been on the stage. In Pacifico at the Chalet and in a film with Eddie Constantine. She says it’s awful, telling him her awful life story. He says he’s a friend and asks for a smile. She says no that she doesn’t feel like it. They stare at each other. She had seemed at the point of breaking down and crying but instead she finally gives in to him, laughing briefly, her eyes still gleaming with tears. She smiles. When they stand to leave he asks if he can come with her and she says yes. They kiss. She exhales the smoke he had intaken.
She asks when she starts and he says when it turns dark the streetwalkers’ endless beat begins.
AFTERNOONS — MONEY — SINKS — PLEASURE — HOTELS.
They ride in a car. She asks what is the routine and he says it’s a matter of trading on her charms, building up a clientele and establishing good conditions.
Does she have to be beautiful?
No, but if she is it attracts the attention of the pimp.
Must she register?
When Nana had asked if she had to be beautiful, the visual had moved to shots of Nana at work, leading Johns to hotel rooms, taking money, robing, disrobing. Raoul gives a history of the laws concerning prostitution and the rundown of what she must do as these shots continue, Nana now completely comfortable with her work, smiling for the customers, the smile dropping and impatience entering when they hold her too close to see her expression.
Must she accept everyone? Yes, she must accept everyone who pays.
A YOUNG MAN — LUIGI — NANA WONDERS IF SHE’S HAPPY.
“What about days off?”
“Usually after her medical check her man takes her out, often to see her child in the country. After that they go to the theater or the cinema.”
Nana, dressed up in a coat with a white fur collar and cuffs, arrives with Raoul at a bar. He says he’s going up to see Luigi and should only be five minutes. Disgruntled, she says the movie has already started anyway. He goes up the steps and she orders a drink and asks if there are cigarettes as a blond man comes down briefly and then goes back up the stairs. She eyes him, her expression passing coquettishness, approaching lasciviousness, inviting, quite unlike the Nana that she had been. He takes a second glance but that’s all. She follows him upstairs and stalks him at the pool table. He looks at her in such a way as to communicate she’s interfering with his game, so she goes over to where Raoul is sitting with Luigi and asks for a cigarette but they tell her they’re downstairs. (A sign that reads “AMATEURS” is above their heads.) Luigi, learning she was supposed to go to the movies with Raoul, says he’ll cheer her up. For the camera he does a comedic act, portraying a child blowing up a balloon bigger and bigger until it pops. Nana laughs and says he ought to be her man as Raoul tells her to let them alone now. The blond man had gone back downstairs. Returning, he hands a pack of cigarettes to Nana and returns to his pool game. She slips a coin in the juke box and, in her dark sweater and her light blouse with the frilled bodice that is buttoned up to her neck, her checked skirt that comes below her knees, begins to dance to the upbeat guitar-driven music, circling the room, teasing the blond, then Raoul, Luigi, smiling gaily throughout her performance which is both intended to be alluring as well as a celebration of the music, but ends up coming off as somewhat stiff and even, yes, amateurish, though interesting. One feels how she must have all eyes on her, viewing her as special, but the men aren’t interacting, none abandon their pursuits to be with her. At the end she leans against one of the supporting poles in the room and, unable to arouse responsive interest, looks more perplexed than happy as a vocal burst of song at the end of the tone exclaims, “Swing, swing, swing!”
THE STREETS — A GUY — HAPPINESS IS NO FUN
Nana out on the street, leaning against a wall of posters, waiting. She is almost unrecognizable now. Though ever smiling in her bid to attract johns, her face comes near to looking like a mask, though she is still present, not removed. Her posture looks now like the streetwalkers in earlier shots so that she no longer stands out from them but is a part of the street. She goes up to the hotel room with a client, states her price but coaxes more money out of him. Makes small talk about his name and occupation. When he says he does advertizing pictures she takes an interest, wondering if it’s like films, but he does illustration work. She asks him if he saw the film, “No Pity”, where she appeared with Eddie Constantine. No. She asks if he’s romantic as he isn’t talking much. Yes. She says if he gives her more money he can stay. The film goes silent, we don’t hear what he says, but in response Nana asks if he wants a second girl, which he does, so she now goes around to the other rooms to dredge up an unoccupied girl. She finds one and returns to the room. He gets up and goes over to the other woman. She asks if he wants her to strip and he says no, it’s not worth it. She asks, “Am I to do nothing?” His response is he doesn’t know as he and the other prostitute immediately get down to business. Nana sits facing away, smoking a cigarette, the animation gone, looking rejected.
It is a curious scene, Nana feeling rejected even as a seasoned prostitute
PLACE DU CHATELET — A STRANGER — NANA THE UNWITTING PHILOSOPHER
Shots of real streetwalkers on the streets. Into one of these shots, Nana slips, we recognizing her by her white fur cuffs and collar as the camera passes.
A restaurant. Nana takes a seat. She flirts with a man off camera. “Mind if I look?” No, he doesn’t mind. She says he looks bored and he says he’s not. She asks what he’s doing and he says he’s reading. She asks him to buy her a drink and when he says she will she goes and sits with him. The camera now goes to him, focuses only on him, an elderly man who is perhaps in his 60s . She says she suddenly doesn’t know what to say and that this happens to her, she knows what she wants to say but when the moment comes she can’t.
He asks her if she’s read the Three Musketeers, but she’s only seen the movie. He tells her of big Porthos who has never thought once in his life. Now he is to blow up a building. He puts the bomb in the basement, and lights the fuse, but as he is running off, he thinks about how is it possible to put one foot in front of another. He can’t go on. The bomb explodes and the ceiling falls on him. He supports it on his shoulders for two days but then is crushed under it. The first time he thought, it killed him.
Angered, Nana asks why he’d tell her this horrible story. He says just to talk and they get into a discussion on the nature of speech and thought, whether language is essential for reasoning. She wishes one never had to talk but live in silence, that the more one says the less one’s words mean. He says words are essential. She would like to live without speaking but he says it is impossible. She asks if words betray them and he says yes but people betray words too. He talks of how Plato, long dead, is still speaking to us. That we must think and need words for thinking. She says life should be easy and words are difficult. Referring back to the story of Porthos he says one only learns to speak after death, a renunciation of life for a time, that this is the price one must pay.
“So to speak is fatal,” Nana says.
He says speech is a kind of resurrection, that one must be through a death of speech before living again through speech, one having attained a certain detachment to life.
Nana says one can’t live everyday life with detachment and he talks of balance, swinging from silence to speech.
“From everyday life one rises to a life superior, the thinking life, but this life presupposes one has killed the everyday, elementary life.”
“Then thinking and talking are the same thing?”
“So I believe.”
He talks about how one must pass through error to arrive at truth, and Nana, trusting him completely now, asks him what his thoughts are on love and the music again enters, a sense of pathos, as he gives her his answer. She asks if love shouldn’t be the only truth, and he says then love would have to be without error. “Do you know anyone who knows at once what he loves? Not at twenty…to be completely at one with love you need maturity. That means searching. That is the truth of life…”
He is the first man to really speak with her in the film, not approaching her as sexual, but as another individual. And he doing so, she has tried to respond, to communicate how she feels. Is the man right about words and thought? It doesn’t even matter. What matters is his approaching her as a person, someone with whom to share experience, rather than an object to be manipulated.
AGAIN THE YOUNG MAN — THE OVAL PORTRAIT — RAOUL TRADES NANA
The blond man from the bar, the one who had purchased the cigarettes from Nana, is shown reading The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe. Having rejected her as a prostitute at the bar, he is apparently now Nana’s lover, she asking him what they should do today, should they go to Luxemborg, she hoping it won’t rain.
He reads, looking at her against the window, “I thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed before, it was the portrait of a girl just ripening into womanhood, I glanced at the painting hurriedly and then closed my eyes. It was an impulsive movement to gain time for thought, to make sure that my vision hadn’t deceived me…” He continues reading the story of the painting, a vignette, a beautiful work of art, but why was it so moving that it could even be mistaken for the head of a living person.
She asks if that’s his book and he replies that no he’d found it there.
He continues reading of the painter who becomes so invested in the painting of his wife that he rarely looks at her, filling the painting with her very life’s essence, and finally, when he has completed the portrait, declaring it is life itself, he finds that his wife has died.
Fade to black.
Music again as they embrace. He would like to go to the Louvre but Nana says no. He says art and beauty are life and Nana laughs, hugging him, says she adores him. He asks her to come live with him and Nana says yes, that she’ll tell Raoul it’s over.
Fade to black.
From above we see Raoul pushing Nana out of her apartment building, through the court yard. They are arguing. Outside a car is waiting for them in which there are several men. She is ushered in. Fade to black. They drive past the Louvre. She asks what’s wrong. She is told she must take anyone who pays and she says no, it’s degrading.
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
Fade to black.
They drive past Jules and Jim playing at the cinema. She asks why she has been made to come along and is told because she is going with these other men. They pass before a door with ironwork above reading ENFER ET SES FILS (Hades and Sons).
Fade to black.
A street corner. The car comes around the corner and parks before a restaurant. Raoul gets out as does the man to whom Nana will be traded. Raoul takes Nana out of the car, grabs and holds her in front of himself, demanding the money before handing her over. They bring him a satchel of money. He releases Nana and goes to the car then grabs her again, saying 100,000 is missing. The man to whom she’s being turned over pulls a gun and says don’t imagine he won’t shoot because of the girl. He then shoots but there is no bullet, he forgot to load the gun. He tells the man next to him to fire. He does, striking Nana. Raoul runs to the car and grabs a gun and fires, also hitting Nana, who falls in the street, presumably dead.
FIN
And that’s it. Go to black, Nana lying silent in the middle of the street as the cars drive off, having descended into the infernal, death, as is directly pointed out by the iron letters, as is anticipated by her conversation with the philosopher who told her the story of Porthos. Or was as anticipated by story of the woman falling dead when the Pygmalian image of her was complete.
One is reminded of the scene where Nana met Raoul, that finished with the machine gun fire (later given as a political happening), the bloodied man who stumbled into the bar, saying, “My eyes.” One projects ahead to Godard’s Band of Outsiders, starring Anna Karina as Odile, which appears to draw on the story of St. Odile, born blind, was the patron saint of eye health. In that movie Anna goes into a bathroom and sees the young woman who will star as the songstress Madeline in “Masculine-Feminine” standing before a mirror, applying eye make-up, reading from an article on eyes, “Gardez VosYeux De’Enfant”. In that film, while the characters wait to perform their robbery, they make a madcap running tour of the Louvre, then during the second attempt of the robbery Goddard briefly focuses on an oval portrait of a woman on the wall, which I would tend to take as a reference to “My Life to Live” and the story of the woman whose life is drawn out of her with the completion of her portrait…or who ceases to be valued for herself, the beloved, with the completion of the idealized portrait. By the time we get to the film “Masculine-Feminine”, Anna Karina is no longer riveting our eyes to the screen, but the star’s hairstyle is the same pageboy as Nana’s in this film, and the character of Madeline will be very like Nana but even more advanced in her distancing, less self aware, even more given over to pop and novelty, more insecure and concerned with appearances and entrancing others with her look, her voice, but not interested in real involvement or any real passion.
The philosopher, Brice Parain, an influence on Godard and author of “Researches into the Nature and Function of Language”, plays himself in the film, improvising answers to questions Godard was asking him off camera.
Do I believe we must have language in order to have thought? No, but what I think isn’t the question here. But however influenced by Parain he was (at least at the time of his early films), I do wonder if Godard absolutely believed (or believes) that language = thought, having gone into cinema which draws on a variety of resources for communication. He does even make his streets and walls speak, doesn’t he, plastering with signs, making use of grafitti, but it seems as if coming straight out of the line of cathedral builders and sculptors transmitting messages through form rather than word, for even with the signs one has to look past the word into the spirit beyond. Before this film (which I’d not seen before) I had thought of Godard’s use of signs and grafitti as his understanding how the litter of the world does communicate on a level past conscious awareness and accentuating, making personal as when the mundane transforms and becomes significant with mystic revelation, molding it into a language of cinema for the viewer, which refers to the antique and living myths that reside in the shadows…which is how I’ll continue to look at his filmwork.
In this film the silences, the spaces between music and words, should be received in light of Parain’s words, the pendulum swinging back and forth between silence and language, repose and thought, between renunciation of life and resurrection to it. On, off, on, off.
Swing, swing, swing.
As in his other films, the mechanism alerts the viewer to the cinematic “language”, the molding of perceptions, objectifies, each silence in Godard’s films forcing a detachment from the experience, a removal from the hypnotic dream, so that when one is reimmersed it is with a new level of awareness of what is transpiring.
For more on the film see IMDB.
Leave a Reply