Vivre Sa Vie

As a visual poem to Jean Luc Godard’s Danish leading lady and then wife, Anna Karina, Vivre Sa Vie offers an amazingly close replication of the sensation of falling in love.

Shot in Paris in just four weeks, this French New Wave picture is ostensibly the tragic story of one-time mother and wannabe actress Nana (Karina). Vivre observes her downward spiral towards prostitution, as capitalism wields its dehumanising and demoralising influence.

Unusually for Godard, though, this 1962 work leavens it Marxist politics with genuine warmth. In one fiction-blurring-into-fact scene, as Nana spends time with a lover, Godard is heard narrating the story of an artist who spends so long perfecting a picture of his wife that she dies. This tale from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Oval Portrait is typical of the film’s dark romance and grim humour.

Add to this a dazzling array of cinematic techniques, including off-kilter shot composition, a soundtrack which dances in and out, and heraldic intertitles, and you have a film which is essential viewing.