Vivre Sa Vie: Living "the life"

Vivre Sa Vie: Film en Douze Tableaux (1962) is one of J L Godard's earliest films starring his wife at the time, Anna Karina. The form of the film is twelve tableaux or chapters, a narrative convention in several Godard films. The twelve chapters follow the evolution of Nana's metamorphosis from wife to prostitute - "the life". (The English translation of the title, My Life to Live, betrays the meaning of the title).

There are frequent gazes by Anna Karina at the camera, and shots of Paris as a moving image tour by cinematographer Raoul Coutard, in medium and long shot. The reverence with which Godard frames his young wife is captivating.

Anna plays Nana Kleinfrankenheim, a young 22 year old woman from Flexbourg near the German border with three brothers and two sisters. Anna Karina born in Denmark also bears an outsider name: Hanne Karin Blarke Bayer.

Out of financial desperation Nana becomes a prostitute in Paris. Godard's preoccupation with the theme of prostitution is well known. An opening quote sets the stage, "Il faut se préter aux autres et se donner a soi-mème by Montaigne -"lend yourself to others and give yourself to yourself" (Man ska låna sig åt andra och ge sig åt sig själv). Ironically Nana is never able to do this. She is caught in the world of assumptions about women, which inevitably involve sexual metaphor. "If you say something coarse to a woman and she protests, she is a slut", says a man in a café, "but if she smiles, she is a lady". To stand apart from the ordinary prostitute, Nana is quickly established as a lady when a pimp tells Nana that her hairstyle is ugly, and she smiles. She soon turns to prostitution after she is locked out of her apartment for not paying rent.

1 Un bistrot - Nana veut abandonner - Paul - L'appareil a sous. (At a bistro, Anna wants to leave Paul, flipper, pinball game)
The film begins with Nana breaking up with her husband Paul and leaving him and their child. She has fallen out of love because he doesn't seem to notice her and she thinks he is mean. She wants him to loan her 20 francs, her rent, and he refuses. He has taken photos of her which she wants to see. She tells him that she has met someone who thinks she has a chance in movies. When she meets this man he shows her models of his work with scantily clad photos of women that he claims he sends to producers. She also asks him for 20 francs.

In real life J L Godard wanted to put Anna Karina in Breathless (1960) but she refused to star naked. He argued that she had already taken off her clothes for Palmolive as a model. Anna Karina was indignant and said that she was wearing a flesh toned bathing suit and accused Godard of undressing her in his mind.

2 Le magasin de disques- deux mille francs - Nana vit sa vie (at a record shop, two million francs, Nana lives her life)
3 La concierge - Paul - La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc - Un journaliste (The concierge, Paul and The Passion of Jeanne d'Arc, a journalist.)

Nana works in a record shop where a clerk owes her 20 francs. At night she goes to the movies and in one scene she watches The Passion of Jeanne D' Arc by the Danish director Carl Dryer (1928) with classic closeups of Maria Falconetti's face. In the scene Jeanne is interrogated by priests including the sympathetic father played by Antonin Artaud who tells her she is going to die and will be burned at the stake. One of many premonitions on the death of Anna.

4 La police - interrogatoire de Nana (the police interrogate Nana)
Nana is arrested for theft from a woman who "drops" 1000 francs. Though she offers to return it, the woman presses charges. She has now lost her apartment and claims she lives with friends. The police asks her what she is going to do and she replies, " I don't know, I am someone else". Already Nana has separated from her authentic self.

5 Les boulevards extérieurs. Le premier homme - La chambre. (The suburbs, the first man, the bedroom).
Nana goes to the suburbs of Paris where other prostitutes gather. Later she is propositioned by a man for sex. She is repulsed by her first encounter, a man who forces him to kiss her with an open mouth.

6 Recontre avec Yvette - Un café de banlieue - Raoul - Mitraillade dehors (Meeting with Yvette, a café in the suburbs, Raoul, shooting outside)
Nana meets Yvette, a housewife with children abandoned by her husband who has become a sex worker. Nana remarks that everyone is responsible for their actions. J L Godard may imply that Nana is not a victim, but freely chooses her lifestyle. Yet in almost very encounter with men she is a commodity of exchange that works against her will. The necessity of prostitution for the buyer is articulated. A French in the background tells the story of a man who lives with his wife in the suburbs, where his wife doesn't wear sunglasses and works in a factory in Créteil. They live a domestic life and only see his godmother, and never go to the Riviera. Anna looks straight into the camera. Nana meets Yvette's pimp, Raoul, who tells Nana her hairstyle is ugly. In Godard's Band à Part, Arthur first gets Odile's attention (Karina) by telling her that her hairstyle is ugly.

7 La Lettre - Encore Raoul - Les Champs Elysées (the letter, enter Raoul, Champs Elysées)
There is a closeup of Raoul's financial ledger with the women he pimps. A man is shot outside the café. As the police rush up, Nana runs away to another café overlooking a large boulevard. She writes a letter to get work in a firm on referral from a friend, and offers to send a photo. Raoul who has followed her tells her she can make much more money as a prostitute. He begins by telling her that she radiates goodness and that he is her friend. Nana wonders what category of women he has put her in. He replies that there are three categories: women with one, two and three expressions. After the conversation Raoul blows smoke in her mouth and she blows it out with a smile.

8 Les aprés-midi - L'argent - Les lavabos (bathroom sink) - Le plaisir - Les hôtels (afternoon, money, pleasure, hotels)
A series of off screen questions between Raoul and Anna establish the nature of her work: how much she will earn, what happens with the police, etc. He tells her the law. Before 1946 known prostitutes were registered with the police and health board and since 1947 only with the health board. In 1958 prostitutes are not supposed to walk back and forth on the streets, and stay away from Bois du Bologne and Champs Elysees. The establishing shot for this line of questioning is the Arc d' Triomphe on the Champs Elysees, then shots of Nana in a car, her hands receiving money, and shots of fully clothed clients and fixtures in hotel rooms.

9 Un jeune homme - Luigi - Nana se demande si elle est heurese A young man, Luigi, Anna wonders if she is happy
10 Un trottoir - un type - le bonheur n'est pas gai (A sidewalk, a particular type of man, happiness is not gay)

Frequent artful closeups of Anna Karina's face used by Godard created her legendary iconography. One poster shots for the film is Nana standing in a sunlight in front of a billboard on a street smoking before she meets a trick. She leaves with a man, un type, who changes his mind about whether he will pay for sex or not in a threesome.
Anna Karina loved to dance and sing, and in this sequence Nana dances to a jukebox for Raoul and his men in a billiard hall and a young man she falls for. Raoul promises to take her to the movies but changes his mind. As part of the ritual used to establish prostitution, she swings around a pole, with the lyrics of a French tune "swing swing swing" in refrain.

11 Place du Châtelet - L'inconnu - Nana fait de la philosophie sans les savoir (Place du Châtelet, the unknown, Nana unknowingly, ovetande, engages in philsophy)
Nana asks an old man to buy her a drink in a posh café. In real life this is the philosopher Brice Parain. They speak about the regulating function of words. References are made to Plato and The Three Musketeers. The philosopher says one lives another life by not speaking and has to go through death. During the conversation Nana looks at the camera. Knowingly.

12 Encore le jeune homme - Le portrait ovale - Raoul revend Nana (Enter a young man, The Oval Portrait, Raoul sells Nana).
Godard in voice over quotes The Oval Portrait by Edgard Allen Poe (Oeuvres Edgar Poe) while the young man Anna has fallen in love with reads in bed. In the passage an artist paints his wife and in its perfection realizes she must die. Anna is going to quit working for Raoul and move in with her lover. Raoul grabs her as the husband of the concierge does when she tries to get the key to her apartment. She is taken for a ride in a car with a bunch of thugs. She asks what she has done wrong. Raoul tells her she has refused customers, and she responds that they disgust her. In a set up she is for the final time exchanged for money with another group of thugs. Raoul shorts them 1000 franc, and they don't hesitate to shoot her. Afterwards Raoul completes the execution and shoots her. The film ends.

As Godard explores prostitution, he postures his own wife as a commodity throughout the film. After her first film with him he didn't want her to work anymore, ironically a typical scenario when a customer falls for a prostitute, and the ultimate commodification through total ownership. It is not unlike a pimp taking control of an independent prostitute.

Karin left Godard seven years later, and he was so indignant that he cut up her clothes. Their marriage can be described as highly toxic, with periods of calm, fighting, possessiveness and desertion. After years of this, their final collaboration was Made In U.S.A, where Anna Karina shows her defiance of this liaison to the camera, a film that signifies the end of the relationship.

Les Tableaux
1 Un bistrot - Nana veut abandonner - Paul - L'appareil a sous.
2 Le magasin de disques- deux mille francs - Nana vit sa vie
3 La concierge - Paul - La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc - Un journaliste
4 La police - interrogatoire de Nana
5 Les boulevards extérieurs . Le premier homme - La chambre
She goes to the exterior for her first job. Maillot Palace
6 Recontre avec Yvette - Un café de banlieue - Raoul - Mitraillade dehors
7 La Lettre - Encore Raoul - Les Champs Elysées
8 Les aprés-midi - L'argent - Les lavabos - Le plaisir - Les hôtels
9 Un jeune homme - Luigi - Nana se demande si elle est heurese
10Un trottoir - un type - le bonheur n'est pas gai
11 Place du Châtelet - L'inconnu - Nana fait de la philosophie sans les savoir
12 Encore le jeune homme - Le portrait ovale - Raoul revend Nana.

Créteil 31 Honors Anna Karina

Here is a photo of Anna Karina. You may not recognize her. Her face is hidden, behind a camera. The camera eye eclipses the wide eyes that have become immortalized. In the interview below, a photographer claims that it was Anna Karina's eyes that set her apart from other models. These eyes which have become Karina's trademark are behind the agency of a lens. As réalisatrice (director), she does the observing, she looks at us. Though we know Anna Karina as J L Godard's muse, some years after she broke up with him she went on to make a movie, Vivre Ensemble (Living Together)in 1972. There is only one copy of the film in the world, and I saw it at Créteil Films de Femmes 31. (13-23 March) at Cinema La Lucarne in Créteil.
The film, like Vivre Sa Vie, (Living "the life") has a tableaux form. It can be seen as a response to Godard's film. It is the story of Julie (Anna Karina), a hippie girl with a lifestyle involving drugs and alcohol and casual sex who enters into a relationship with a teacher, Alain (Michel Lancelot). He quits his job to be with Julie and slowly becomes a part of her world, leaving his business suits and proper manners behind for a new bohemian life. In the process he becomes addicted to drugs and alcohol. Julie's values change when she becomes a mother, but Alain slowly deteriorates, giving private lessons to children while drunk. In Vivre Sa Vie, Godard's Nana says that we are all responsible for our actions. Although her husband tries to blame Julie for his decline in Vivre Ensemble, Karina emphasizes that he makes his own fate as does Julie but is sympathetic to Alain and the existential angst of his life. Set in New York and Paris, there are many enchanting moments that capture the spirit of the 70s with the political activism, flower power and posture of just letting people be. Karina has made a poignant film that is both whimsical and melancholic.
Anna Karina was honored with a retrospective of films at Créteil this year which includes the first one that she made at 14 in Denmark: Pigen og Skoene - the Girl with the Shoes (11', 1959). The director IB Schmedes noticed Anna on the street dancing and singing. The film won a prize at Cannes at 1959 as the best short. Pigen og Skoene features a tall and very mature Anna sporting a pony tail who spots a pair of high heels that she wants to wear on a date. The shoes cause great pain for her feet and make her late. So her comfortable pumps catch up with her so that she can run to meet her boyfriend. In this film, Anna Karina, born Hanne Karin Bayer in Copenhagen Denmark in 1940, shows how she was ready for the camera. In films with Jacques Rivette, George Cukor, Luchino Visconti and J L Godard she shows a sensibility and wit that have made her an art house icon. Anna Karina continues to make films and her latest feature Victoria caught the attention of Korean youth who skipped school to see it where it debuted at the Pusan Film Festival in 2008, the 30th Florence International Women's Film Festival, 2008 and the 31st Créteil Films de Femmes Festival, 2009. Victoria ,
is directed and written by Anna Karina with music by Philippe Katerine. It is an experimental musical road HD video about a mysterious mute woman, Victoria, Louis' boss who gets gigs around Quebec for two musicians in drag, Stanislaus and Jimmy. Victoria's connection with Stanislaus turns out to be karmic. The film is low budget with artful invention and a clever narrative style.

Below:

• Exclusive interview with Moira Sullivan and Anna Karina at Créteil on Movie Magazine International, April 1, 2009, 9pm PST, 90.3 FM San Francisco, national webcast from April 3-9th.
• Exclusive interview with Moira Sullivan and Julie Dash at Créteil on Movie Magazine International,March 25, 2009, 9pm PST, 90.3 FM San Francisco, national webcast from March 27 - April 2.

Obama's and Michelle's Dance

Finally, an inauguration worthy of watching, finally inaugural balls worthy of watching, finally a presidency that commands respect. Finally an African American in the White House. This moment, this dance, this president is the strongest, most dignified and most gifted leader we have had in a long time - and alongside every powerful man, is a powerful woman, and now we have both. A thinking man and a thinking woman. We have waited a long time, for this moment , this dance! But remember Obama is not a messiah and it will take a long time to undue the wreckage of Bush Jr.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
Barack Obama, January 20, 2009.

Good Gravy for Tina Fey

Its a great year for Tina Fey who reminded everyone at the Golden Globes tonite that the Internet can always cut you down to right size if everything seems to go too well.
And for good luck she told cyber scrooges "babs in la crosse", "cougarletter" and dianefan to "suck it".
This was Tina Fey's night, even if she almost tripped on the red carpet going up for her award. The comedienne who comically brought out the very worst on Sarah Palin was voted best actress in a TV comedy on January 11 by the Hollywood Foreign Press.

Gus Van Sant Gets Milk Nearly All Right

If Gus Van Sant's new film Milk about the late Harvey Milk had been released before November 4th maybe it might have made a difference towards defeating Proposition 8 which takes away the rights of gays and lesbians to marry in California. Certainly in his lifetime, the late gay supervisor successfully rallied against the Proposition 8 of that time, the Briggs Initiative - Proposition 5 - which would have taken away the rights of lesbians and gays to teach in schools and ANYONE who supported them. This was the time when ex beauty queen Anita Bryant worked to get such an ordinance passed in Dade County Florida. Harvey Milk believed that if you didn’t register to vote you were giving away your rights and he pounded that home at the Civic Center during Gay pride 1978 a high point of the film. I heard Milk and registered for the 1st time after his powerful speech.
Gus Van Sant has done an excellent job of making a completely well crafted movie about the life and times of Harvey Milk who was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone in San Francisco on November 27th 1978 - and tomorrow it will be exactly 30 years since Dan White, an ex fireman executed these two men in their offices under the influence of Twinkies. The film premiered earlier last month in San Francisco on October 28th and all the actors were on hand with Gus Van Sant to usher in the film at the Castro Theater.
Sean Penn plays Harvey Milk and he is totally convincing in every scene in representing this wonderful and enthusiastic supervisor who knew about people and their needs and how to successfully implement policy by building grass root connections. Harvey Milk energized the gay community and helped make the Castro a booming mecca for gay men. Though lesbians preferred to hang out in the East Bay or in the Mission, according to activist San Francisco educator Sally Gearheart Milk was concerned that lesbians were represented in every issue and brought in Anne Kronenberg ( Alison Pill) to run his campaign. Its hard to not fall in love all over again with Milk and thanks to the efforts of Sean Penn he is made real down to his truly humble happy and hard working persona. Josh Brolin plays Dan White brilliantly, a homicidal man Milk believed was a troubled latent homosexual. Despite his childish excesses Harvey Milk continued to fraternize with White even seconds before he was shot. Less successful in the film is Diego Luna as Milk’s lover Jack Lira. In real life though he was caught up with helping distressed men his long-term relationship with Scott Smith (James Franco) endured even after they went separate ways.
The film is not only the story of Harvey Milk but the galvanization of the gay community in San Francisco and while Milk would have been quick to point out that there are very few lesbians in this film – something that Van Sant seems to miss - he would have been happy to know that things changed during his life for the better. It is not always easy to make an historical film that rings true to life but Milk is one of those films that seems to get it mostly right.

Movie Magazine San Francisco Airdate November 26 2008

Obamaland USA

San Francisco, November 5th 2008
Its an incredible win for Barack Obama, no, incredible is not the word. Its credible. This victory shows that the old paradigm has shifted because we have evolved. The limited blue state, red state argot created out of the aftermath of the last eight year administration is soon to become obsolete just as other significations seem to have marched on. Remember when a red state was a Marxist state?
The color scheme this time seems to be a purple united states. At least that is how Obama envisions it. His victory speech on election night has to be one of the most powerful he has made to date, and of any politician of recent time for that matter, revealing so much more of his core. Obama is also a writer. Nobel prize recipient Toni Morrison points that out. He writes his own speeches and is not dependent on ghost writers. Clearly he won't be needing them for his inaugural address either. I recall the last inauguration that I watched in transit at Logan Airport in Boston. I was excited about a new time that promised a different kind of change. Poet laureate Dr Maya Angelou afterwards called Bill Clinton the first "black" president. Barack Obama is the real first. But he is far more than that. His refreshing ideas are what make him stand out more than anything, as well as his cool and refusal to stoop to manipulation and bating. He also picks his own staff and his running mate. He doesn't have to stiff it to anyone like the McCain camp who is already hanging out Governor Palin. As if to say that if McCain lost it was because of a woman. Obama shows every sign, so far, of making his own decisions and being comfortable in the driver's seat.
But now we come to another issue on election day that did not go so well. California Proposition 8, a deftly worded bigoted Mormon funded proposal to ban gay marriage passed by a small majority (5000 votes). One of the most expensive campaigns on a single issue in US history. How can it be, and of course the answer is inherent in the question, that we can embrace change on so much but not on the subject of marriage rights for lesbians and gays? The time has not come? What comparisons can we make here? Repealing Roe/Wade is not going to happen in this presidency, but perhaps gay marriage will not either. Civil rights for all is the paradigm waiting to shift, and perhaps San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is the person that will make that happen as he steps into the national arena. Could he be the "first gay mayor" for making it known that this was a real election day defeat in a blue state that is far from the color purple.

Journalist Ulrike Meinhof: From Theory to Practice

based on Stefan Aust's novelEichenhof Rote Armee Fraktion (or Meinhofthe cultural political journal konkret Klaus Rainer Röhl served as editor. It is not easy to understand how Ulrike Meinhof became one of the most wanted criminals in modern German history but Sem-Sandberg claims its out there waiting to be re-discovered.

June 2 1967, representingwho were beaten and shot. Moritz Bleibtreu) in Edel's filmsuch as the shooting of civilians in Vietnam,Bundeskriminalamt (German bureau of investigation) tries to piece together why young people are becoming terrorists in Germany, naïvely intellectualizing the violence - a phenomena that Meinhof had spent years studying before becoming an activist. It is Herold who lights up like a Christmas tree when he connects the protests over US military imperialism in Vietnam, the generous supply o f US weapons to Israel, and the search for oil in the Middle East - to the bombings and gun power of the RAF. As military police he knows that terrorism is a reflection of power imbalance and his strategy is to make it larger and crank up the volume full blast to squash any resistance, thereby creating an über police state with tacit support of the German population. In response Ulrike Meinhof quotes Mao who states that a clear line of distinction is created when the enemy tries to squelch the truth by blacklisting the protest(ers). When she is incarcerated and isolated at Köln-Ossendorf she is aware of the effect this has on the psyche. When she later interacts with Gudrun Esslin at Stammheim to get their case prepared for trial they turn on each other. But although Esslin was considered the leader of the RAF it is actually Meinhof's analysis of repressive political systems that sets them apart from senseless young hooligans, and which motivates their cause and conviction. Esslin no longer can make sense of Meinhof's analyses that have served the RAP before their incarceration. She insists that RAF take full responsibility for their actions - and that a rescue mission be set into operation to get them out.

The Baader Meinhof Complex is Germany's contribution to the Best Foreign Language film category for this year's Academy Awards. It is a riveting chronicle of events from June 2 1976 to several bank robberies and bombings and the incarceration of several members of the RAF. Events leading up to the trial of astonishing legal impropriety and the presumed execution of Meinhof, Esslin and Baader reveals a bungling intelligence apparatus gone haywire that just wants to make it go away, anyway. There has been a distinct glamourization of violence and sexuality up until this point. The Baader Meinhof Complex is after all aimed at young people who weren't born at the time, and older people who were young at the time. At Stammheim it stops. Gone are the devil may care rides on the freeway at top speed, the spirit of collective action and the intoxicating suspense and high of several planned attacks that consume the film almost until the end. Yet the incarceration of the RAF leaders encouraged more young people to continue their cause. The execution of members of the Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972 is linked to the RAF, further evidence of the proverb that if you cut off the head of a dragon more will grow in its place. Bob Dylan's song at the end that "the answer is blowing in the wind" describes how little Germany understood its youth and their rebellion. The Baader Meinhof Complex articulates the mind and muscle behind political violence and it resonates deeply for those trying to make sense of terrorism today.