Godard's Vivre Sa Vie

Home , Anna Karina, A Woman Is a Woman, Le Petit Soldat, My Life to Live

PREFACE: Vivre Sa Vie invites a rather theoretical treatm ent, because it is– intellectually, aesthetically– extrem ely com plex. Godard's films are about ideas, in the best, purest, m ost sophisticated sense in which a work of art can be "about" ideas. I have discovered, while writing these notes, that in an interview in the Paris w eekly, L'Express, July 27, 1961, he said: "M y three film s all have, at bottom , the sam e subject. I take an individual who has an idea, and who tries to go to the end of his idea." Godard said this after he had made, besides a num ber of short films, A Bout de Souffle (1959) w ith Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo, Le Petit Soldat (1960 ) w ith M ichel S ub or a nd Anna K a rina , a nd Une Femm e est U ne Fem m e (1961) w ith Karina, B elm ondo, and Jean-C laude B rialy. How this is true of Vivre Sa Vie, h is fourth film , w hich he m ade in 1962, is w hat I have attem pted to show .

NO TE: Godard, who was born in Paris in 1930, has now completed ten feature films. After the four mentioned above, he made Les Carabiniers (1962 -63) w ith M a rino M a se a nd A lbert J u ross, Le M épris (1963) w ith B rigitte Bardot, Jack Palance, and Fritz Lang, Bande à Part (1964) w ith K a rina , S a m i Frey, a nd C lau d e B ra sseu r, Une Fem m e M ariée (19 6 5 ) w ith Macha Méril a nd B erna rd N oël, Alphaville (1965) w ith K a rina , Ed d i C onsta ntine a nd Akim Tam iroff, and Pierrot le Fou (1965) w ith Karina and Belm ondo. Six of the film s have been show n in Am erica. The first called Breathless h ere, is b y n o w esta b lish ed a s a n a rt-h o u se cla ss; th e eigh th , The Married Woman, has had a m ixed reception; but the others, under the titles A W om an Is a W om an, My Life to Live, Contempt, a nd Band of Outsiders, have been bother critica l and box-office flops. T he brilliance of A Bout de Souffle is now obvious to everybod y a nd I sha ll explain m y esteem for Vivre Sa Vie. W hile I am not claim ing that all his other w ork is on the sam e level of excellence, there is no film of G odard's w hich does not have many remarkable passages of the highest quality. The obtuseness of serious critics here to the merits of Le Mépris, a d eep ly flaw ed b u t nonetheless extra ord ina rily a m b itiou s a nd origina l film , seem s to m e p a rticu larly la m e n ta b le .

"T he cinem a is still a form of graphic art," C octeau w rote in his Journals. "T hrough its m ediation, I w rite in pictures, and secure for m y ow n ideology a pow er in actual fact. I show w hat others tell. In O rphée, for exam ple, I do not narrate the passing through m irrors; I show it, and in som e m anner, I prove it. T he m eans I use are not important, if m y characters perform publicly w hat I w ant them to perform . The greatest pow er of a film is to be indisputable w ith respect ot the actions it determ ines and w hich are carried out before our eyes. It is norm al for the w itness of an action to transform it for his ow n use, to distort it, and to testify to it inaccurately. B ut the action w as carried out, and is carried out as often as the m achine resurrects it. It com bats inexact testim onies and false police reports."

All art m ay be treated as a m ode of proof, an assertion of accuracy in the spirit of m aximum vehem ence. Any work of art may be seen as an attempt to be indisputable with respect to the actions it represents. 3

Proof differs from analysis. Proof establishes that som ething happened. Analysis show s w hy it happened. Proof is a m ode of argum ent that is, by definition, com plete; but the price of its com pleteness is that proof is alw ays form al. O nly w hat is already contained in the beginning is proven at the end. In analysis, how ever, there are alw ays further angles of understanding, new realm s of causality. Analysis is substantive. Analysis is a m ode of argum ent that is, by definition, alw ays incom plete; it is, properly speaking, interm inable. The extent to which a given work of art is designed as a mode of proof is, of course, a matter of proportion. Surely, som e w orks of art are m ore directed tow ard proof, m ore based on considerations of form , than others. But still, I should argue, all art tends tow ard the formal, tow ard a com pleteness that must be formal rather than substantive– endings that exhibit grace and design, and only secondarily convince in term s of psychological motives or social forces. (Think of the barely credible but immensely satisfying endings of Shakespeare's plays, particularly the com edies.) In great art, it is form – or, as I call it here, the desire to prove rather than the desire to analyze– that is ultimately sovereign. It is form that allow s one to term inate.

An art concerned w ith proof is form al in tw o senses. Its subject is the form (above and beyond the m atter) of events, and the form s (above and beyond the m atter) of consciousness. Its m eans are form al; that is, they include a conspicuous elem ent of design (sym m etry, repetition, inversion, doubling, etc.). T his can be true even when the work is so laden with "content" that it virtually proclaims itself as didactic–like Dante's Divine Com edy.

Godard's films are particularly directed toward proof, rather than analysis. Vivre Sa Vie is an exhibit, a dem onstration. It show s th a t som ething happened, not why it happened. It exposes the inexorability of an event. For this reason, despite appearances, Godard's films are drastically untopical. An art concerned w ith social, topical issues can never sim ply show that som ething is. It m ust indicate how . It m u s t s h o w why. B u t th e w h o le point of Vivre Sa Vie is that it d o es n o t exp lain an y th ing. It rejects cau sality. (T h u s, th e o rd inary cau sal seq u en ce of narrative is broken in Godard's film by the extrem ely arbitrary decom position of the story into tw elve episodes– episodes w hich are serially, rather than causally, related.) Vivre Sa Vie is certainly not "about" prostitution, any m ore than Le Petit Soldat is "ab o u t" th e A lgerian W ar.Neith er d o es G o d ard in Vivre Sa Vie give us any explanation, of an ordinary recognizable sort, as to w hat led the principal character, Nana, ever to becom e a prostitute. Is it because she couldn't borrow 2,000 francs tow ard her back rent from her form er husband or from one of her fellow clerks at the record store in w hich she w orks and w as locked out of her apartm ent? Hardly that. At least, not that alone. But w e scarcely know any m ore than this. All G odard show s us is that she did becom e a prostitute. Again, G odard does not show us w hy, at the end of the film , Nana's pim p Raoul "sells" her, or w hat has happened between them , or w hat lies behind the final gun battle in the street in which Nana is killed. He only shows us that she is sold, that she does die. He does not analyze. He proves.

Godard uses two means of proof in Vivre Sa Vie. H e gives us a collection of im ages illustrating w hat he w ants to prove, and a series of "texts" explaining it. In keeping the tw o elem ents separate, Godard's film em ploys a genuinely novel m eans of exposition. 7

Godard's intention is Cocteau's. But Godard discerns difficulties, where Cocteau saw none. What Cocteau wanted to show , to be indisputable w ith reference to, w as m agic– things like the reality of fascination, the eternal possibility of m etam orphosis. (Passing through m irrors, etc.) W hat Godard w ishes to show is the opposite: the anti-m agical, the structure of lucidity. T his is w hy C octeau used tech niques that, by m eans of the alikeness of im ages, bind together events– to form a total sensuous w hole. G odard m akes no effort to exploit the beautiful in this sense. He uses tech niques that w ould fragm ent, dissociate, alienate, break up. Exam ple: the fam ous staccato editing (jum p cut et al.) in A Bout de Souffle. Another exam ple: the division of Vivre Sa Vie into tw elve episodes, w ith long titles like chapter headings at the beginning of each episode, telling us m ore or less w hat is going to happen. The rhythm of Vivre Sa Vie is stop p ing-and -starting. (In another sty le, this is also the rhy th m of Le M épris.) Hence, Vivre Sa Vie is divided into separate episodes. Hence, too, the repeated halting and resum ing of the m usic in the credit sequence; and the abrupt presentation of Nana's face– first in left profile, then (w ithout transition) full face, then (again w ithout transition) in right profile. B ut, above all, there is the dissociation of w ord and im age w hich runs through the entire film , perm itting quite separate accum ulations of intensity for both idea and fe e lin g .

Throughout the history of film, image and word have worked in tandem. In the silent film, the word– set dow n in the form of titles– alternated w ith, literally linked together, the sequences of images. W ith the advnet of sound films, image and w ord becam e simultaneous rather than successive. W hile in silent films the w ord could be either com m ent on the action or dialogue by the participants in the action, in sound film s the w ord becam e (except for docum entaries) almost exclusively, certainly preponderantly dialogue. Godard restores the dissociation of word and image characteristic of silent film, but on a new level. Vivre Sa Vie is clearly com posed of tw o discrete types of m aterial, the seen and the heard. B ut in the distinguishing of these m aterials, G odard is very ingenious, even playful. O ne variant is the television docum entary of ciném a- vérité style of Episode VIII– w hile one is taken, first on a car ride through Paris, then sees, in rapid m ontage, shots of a dozen clients, one hears a dry flat voice rapidly detailing the routine, hazards, and appalling arduousness of the prostitute's vocation. Another variant is in Episode XII, w here the happy banalities exchanged by Nana and her young lover are projected on the screen in the form of subtitles. The speech of love is not heard at all.

Thus, Vivre Sa Vie m ust be seen as an extension of a particular cinem atic genre: the narrated film . T here are tw o standard form s of this genre, w hich give us im ages plus a text. In one, an im personal voice, the author, as it w ere, narrates the film . In the other, w e hear the interio m onologue of the m ain character, narrating the events as w e see them happening to him . Tw o examples of the first type, featuring an anonymous comm enting voice which oversees the action, are Resnais' L'Année D ernière à M arienbadand and M elville's Les Enfants Terribles. An exam ple of the second type, featuring an interior m onologue of the m ain character is Franju's Thérèse Desqueyroux. Probably the greatest xam ples of the second type, in w hich the entire action is recited by the hero are Bresson's Le Journal d'un Curé de Cam pagne an d Un Conam né à Mort s'est Échappé. Godard used the technique brough to perfection by Bresson in his second film, Le Petit Soldat, m a d e in 19 6 0 in G eneva though not released (because for three years it w as banned by the French censors) until 1963. T he film is the sequence of the reflections of the hero, B runo Forestier, a m an em broiled in a right-w ing terrorist organization w ho is assigned the job of killing a Sw iss agent for the FLN. As the film opens, one hears Forestier's voice saying: "The time for action is passed. I have grow n older. The time for reflection has com e." Bruno is a photographer. He says, "To photograph a face is to photgraphy the soul behind it. Photography is truth. And the cinem a is the truth tw enty-four tim es a second." T his central passage in Le Petit Soldat, in w h ic h Bruno meditates on the relation between the image and truth, anticipates the com plex meditation on the relation betw een language and truth in Vivre Sa Vie. Since the story itself in Le Petit Soldat, the factual connections betw een the characters, are m ostly conveyed through Forestier's m onologue, G odard's cam era is freed to becom e an instrum ent of contem plation– of certain aspects of events, and of characters. Q uiet "events"– Karina's face, the façade of buildings, passing through the city by car– are stud ied by the cam era, in a w ay that som ew hat isolates the v iolent action. T he im ages seem arbitrary som etim es, expressing a kind of em otional neutrality; at other tim es, they indicate an intense involvem ent. It is as though G odard hears, then looks at w hat he hears. In Vivre Sa Vie, G odard takes this tech nique of hearing first, then seeing, to new levels of com plexity. T here is n o lo n g e r a s in g le u n ifie d p o in t o f v ie w , e ith e r th e p r o ta g o n is t's v o ic e (a s in Le Petit Soldat) o r a g o d lik e narrator, but a series of docum ents (texts, narrations, quotations, excerpts, set pieces) of various description. These are primarily words; but they may also be worldless sounds, or even wordless images.

All the essentials of Godard's technique are present in the opening credit sequence and in the first episode. The credits occur over a left profile view of N ana, so dark that it is alm ost a silhouette. (The title of the film is Vivre Sa Vie. A Film in Tw elve Episodes.) As the credits continue, she is show n full face, and then from the right side, still in deep shadow . O ccasionally she blinks or shifts her head slightly (as if it w ere uncom fortable to hold still so long), or w ets her lips. N ana is posing. She is being seen. Next w e are given the first titles. "Episode I: Nana and Paul. Nana Feels Like Giving Up." Then the images begin, but the em phasis is on w hat is heard. The film proper opens in the m idst of a conversation betw een Nana and a m an; they are seated at the counter of a café; their backs are to the cam era; besides their conversation, w e hear the noises of the barm an, and snatches of the voices of other custom ers. As they talk, alw ays facing aw ay from the cam era, w e learn that the m an (Paul) is Nana's husband, that they have a child, and that she has recently left both husband and child to try to becom e an actress. In this brief public reunion (it is never clear on w hose initiative it cam e about) Paul is stiff and hostile, but w ants her to com e back; Nana is oppressed, desperate, and revolted by him. After w eary, bitter w ords, Nana says to Paul, "The m ore you talk, the less it m eans." T hroughout this opening sequence, G odard system atically deprives the view er. T here is no cross-cutting. T he view er is not allow ed to see, to becom e involved. H e is only allow ed to hear. Only after Nana and Paul break off their fruitless conversation to leave the counter and play a game at the pinball m achine, do w e see them . Even here, the em phasis rem ains on hearing. As they go on talking, w e continue to see N ana and Paul m ainly from behind. Paul has stopped pleading and being rancorous. H e tells N ana of the droll them e his father, a schoolteacher, received from one of his pupils on an assigned topic, The Chicken. "T he chicken has an inside and an outside," w rote the little girl. "Rem ove the outside and you find the inside. Rem ove the inside, and you find the soul." On these words, the image dissolves and the episode ends.

The story of the chicken is the first of many "texts" in the film which establish what Godard wants to say. For the story of the chicken, of course, is the story of Nana. (T here is a pun in French– the Frenc poule being som ething like, but a good deal rougher than, the Am erican "chick.") In Vivre Sa Vie, w e w itness the stripping dow n of Nana. The film opens w ith nana having divested herself of her outside: her old identity. Her new identity, w ithin a few episodes, is to be that of a prostitute. B ut G odard's interest is in neither the psychology nor the sociology of prostitution. He takes up prostitution as the m ost radical m etaphor for the separating out of the elem ents of a life– as a testing ground, a crucible for the study of w hat is essential and w hat is superfluous in a life . 12

The whole of Vivre Sa Vie m ay b e seen as a tex t. It is a text in, a stu d y o f, lucid ity ; it is ab o u t seriou sn ess. And it "uses" texts (in the m ore literal sense), in all but tw o of its tw elve episodes. The little girl's essay on the chicken told by Paul in Episode I. T he passage from the pulp m agazine story recited by the salesgirl in Episode II. ("You exaggerate the importance of logic.") The excerpt from Dreyer's Jeanne d'Arc w hich Nana watches in Episode III. The story of the theft of 1,000 francs which Nana relates to the police inspector in Episode IV. (We learn that her full nam e is Nana Klein and that she w as born in 1940.) Yvette's story– how she was abandoned by Raymond two years ago–and Nana's speech in reply ("I am responsible") in Episode VI. The letter of application Nana com poses to the m adam of a brothel in Episode VII. T he docum entary narration of the life and routine of the prostitute in Episode VIII. T he record of dance m usic in Episode IX. T he conversation w ith the philosopher in Episode XI. T he excerpt from the story by Edgar Allan Poe ("T he O val Portrait") read aloud by Luigi in Episode XII.

The most elaborate, intellectually, of all the texts in the film is the conversation in Episode XI between Nana and a philosopher (played by the philosopher, Brice Parain) in a café. T hey discuss the nature of language. Nana asks why one can't live without words; Parain explains that it is because talking equals thinking, and thinking talking, and there is no life w ithout thought. It is not a question of speaking or not speaking, but of speaking w ell. Speaking w ell dem ands an ascetic discipline (une ascèse), detach m ent. O ne has to understand, for one thing, that there is no going straight at the truth. O ne needs error. Early in their conversation, Parain relates the story of Dum as' Porthos, the m an of action, w hose first thought killed him . (Running aw ay from a dynam ite charge he had planted, Porthos suddenly w ondered how one could w alk, how anyone ever placed one foot in front of the other. H e stopped. T he dynam ite exploded. H e w as killed.) There is a sense in w hich this story, too, like the story of the chicken, is about Nana. And through both the story and the Poe tale told in the next (and last) episode, w e are being prepared– form ally, not substantively– for Nana's death.

Godard takes his motto for this film-essay on freedom and responsibility from Montaigne: "Lend yourself to others; give yourself to yourself." The life of the prostitute is, of course, the m ost radical m etaphor for the act of lending oneself to others. But if w e ask, how has Godard show n us Nana keeping herself for herself, the answ er is: he has not show n it. He has, rather, expounded on it. W e don't know Nana's m otives except at a distance, by inference. The film eschew s all psychology; there is no probing of states of feeling, of inner anguish. Nana know s herself to be free, Godard tells us. But that freedom has no psychological interior. Freedom is not an inner, psychological som ething– but m ore like physical grace. It is being w hat, w ho one is. In Episode I, Nana says to Paul, "I w ant to die." In Episode II, w e see her desperately trying to borrow m oney, trying unsuccessfully to force her w ay past the concierge and get into her ow n apartm ent. In Episode III, w e see her weeping in the cinema over Jeanne d'Arc. In Episode IV, at the police station, she weeps again as she relates the hum iliating incident of the theft of 1,000 francs. "I w ish I w ere som eone else," she says. But in Episode V ("O n the Street. T he First Client") Nana has becom e w hat she is. She has entered the road that leads to her affirm ation and to her death. O nly as prostitute do w e see a Nana w ho can affirm herself. T his is the m eaning of Nana's speech to her fellow prostitute Yvette in Episode VI, in w hich she declares serenely, "I am responsible. I turn m y head, I am responsible. I lift m y hand, I am responsible." Being free means being responsible. One is free, and therefore responsible, when one realizes that things are as they are. T hus, the speech to Yvette ends w ith the w ords: "A plate is a plate. A m an is a m an. Life is ... life."

That freedom has no psychological interior– that the soul is something to be found not upon but after stripping aw ay the "inside" of a person– is the radical spiritual doctrine w hich Vivre Sa Vie illustrates. One would guess that Godard is quite aware of the difference between his sense of the "soul" and the traditional C hristian one. T he difference is precisely underscored by the quotation from D reyer's Jeanne d'Arc; for the scene w hich w e see is the one in w hich the young priest (played by Antonin Artaud) com es to tell Jeanne (Mlle Falconetti) that she is to be burned at the stake. Her m artyrdom , Jeanne assures the distraught priest, is really her deliverance. W hile the choice of a quotation from a film does distance our em otional involvem ent w ith these ideas and feelings, the reference to m artyrdom is not ironic in this context. Prostitution, as Vivre Sa Vie allow s us to see it, has entirely the character of an ord eal. "P leasure isn't all fun," as the title to Episode X announces laconically. And Nana does die. The twelve episodes of Vivre Sa Vie are N ana's tw elve stations of the cross. B ut in G odard's film the v alues of sanctity and m artyrdom are transposed to a totally secular plane. Godard offers us M ontaigne instead of Pascal, som ething akin to the m ood and intensity of Bressonian spirituality but w ith Catholicism .

The one false step in Vivre Sa Vie co m es at th e en d , w h en G o d ard b reaks th e un ity o f h is film b y referring to it from the outside, as m aker. Episode XII begins w ith Nana and Luigi in a room together; he is a young m an w ith whom she has apparently fallen in love (we have seen him once before, in Episode IX, when Nana meets him in a billiard parlor and flirts w ith him ). At first the scene is silent, and the dialogue--"Shall w e go out?" "W hy don't you move in w ith me?" etc.– rendered in subtitles. The Luigi, lying on the bed, begins to read aloud from Poe's "T he O val Portrait," a story about an artist engaged in painting a portrait of his w ife; he strives for the perfect likeness, but at the m om ent he finally achieves it his w ife dies. T he scene fades out on these w ords, and opens to show Raoul, Nana's pim p, roughly forcing her through the courtyard of her apartm ent house, pushing her into a car. After a car ride (one or tw o brief im ages), Raoul hands Nana over to another pim p; but it is discovered that the m oney exchanged is not enough, guns are draw n, Nana is shot, and the last image show s the cars speeding aw ay and Nana lying dead in the street. What is objectionable here is not the abruptness of the ending. It is the fact that Godard is clearly making a reference outside the film , to the fact that the young actress w ho plays N ana, Anna K arina, is his w ife. H e is mocking his own tale, which is unforgivable. It amounts to a peculiar failure of nerve, as if Godard did not dare to let us have Nana's death– in all its horrifying arbitrariness-but had to provide, at the last m om ent, a kind of sub lim inal causality. (T he w om an is m y w ife.– T he artist w ho portray s his w ife kills her.– N ana m ust die.)

This one lapse aside, Vivre Sa Vie seem s to m e a perfect film . T hat is, it sets out to do som ething that is both noble and intricate, and w holly succeeds in doing it. G odard is perhaps the only director today w ho is interested in "philosophical film s" and possesses an intelligence and discretion equal to the task. O ther directors have had their "view s" on contem porary society and the nature of our hum anity; and som etimes their films survive the ideas they propose. G odard is the first director fully to grasp the fact that, in order to deal seriously w ith ideas, one m ust create a new film language for expressing them – if the ideas are to have an supp leness and com p lexity. T his he has been trying to do in different w ay s: in Le Petit Soldat, Vivre Sa Vie, Les Carabiniers, Le M épris, U n e Fem m e M a riée, a n d Alphaville– Vivre Sa Vie b eing, I think, his m ost successful film . For this conception, and the form idable body of w ork in w hich he has pursued it, Godard is in m y opinion the most important director to have emerged in the last ten years.