My Life to Live

My life to Live comes as close to translating the French titleSa Vie Vivre as it does to presenting a convincing character--not quite close enough. Director Jean-Luc Godord (Breathless) casts his wife, Anna Karina, in a difficult rile. She must persuade us that although she leaves her husband and child to become a prostitute, she is irreproachable. No matter what she does, the movie implies that, like Suzie Wong and Irma La Douce she remains somehow pure.

To compare Sa Vie Vivre with Suzie and Irma is of course heresy: the American films are in middle-brow technicolor while Godard's is in avant-garde black and white. Their endings reflect this difference: while Suzie and Irma live happily ever after, Nana dies at the end.

Tracing her death to philosophy, or sex, or confusion demands a clearer characterization than the movie offers. The philosophic explanation presents Nana as fantastically sensitive, young Nietzschean who gains fulfillment in a self-styled artistic ("Everything's beautiful") rebellion. Like the Joan of Arc she cries over in a movie, Nana dies a martyr's death.

The sexual explanation notes that Nana, though appealing, is not confident of her good looks. In a last meeting with her husband, she suggests that she become, an actress so "people will notice me." He disagrees but, having seen too many movies, Nana takes publicity pictures anyway. She even picks up a customer in a coffee shop to the jukebox tune of "My Girl is No Movie Star."

A third explanation of her dilemma views Nana as a refugee from the rat race in a hyper-Jules Feifferish world. But Nana cannot be convincing in so many roles at once.

Another problem in characterization arises because Godard tries to present Nana's life as an example of a way to salvation. In. her attempt to combine the roles of philosopher, sexual deviant and refugee from Feiffer's world, she seems too pathetic to be a model.

Yet if Godard stumbles with his characterization, he stuns with his camera. His scencs are always precisely composed and his camera angles reveal intelligence and inventiveness. Nothing is superfluous; when sound is unecessary, the film runs in absolute silence. When a machine gun fires, the frames jump in the same staccato. The film is divided into tweive titled episodes; the exposure as well as the focus fades emphatically with the concluding line of each episode. Alternating sequences of an early Dreyer film clip and Godard's modern celluloid contrast sharply with each other.

As a matter of fact, the film is so well photographed that you might enjoy the hoary story.