Godard's Vivre SaVie

Vivre Sa Vie invites a rather theoretical treatment, becauseit isintellectually, aestheticallyextremely complex. Godard'sfilmsare about ideas, in the best, purest, most sophisticatedsense inwhichaworkof art canbe "about" ideas.I have discovered, while writing these notes, that in an interview in the Paris weekly, L'Express,July 27, 1961, he said: "My three films all have, at bottom, the same subject.I take anindividual whohas anidea, andwhotries togotothe endof his idea." Godard said thisafterhehad made, besidesa numberof short films, A Bout de Souffle(1959) with Jean SebergandJean-Paul Belmondo, LePetit Soldat(1960) withMichel Subor andAnnaKarina, and UneFemme est UneFemme(1961) with Karina, Belmondo, and Jean-ClaudeBrialy.How this is trueofVivreSaVie,his fourth film, which he made in 1962, is what I have attempted to show.
NOTE:Godard,

PREFACE:

whowas borninParis in1930, has now completedtenfeature films.After thefour mentioned above, he madeLes Carabiniers(1962-63) withMarinoMaseandAlbert Juross, LeMpris(1963) withBrigitte Bardot, JackPalance, andFritz Lang, BandePart(1964) withKarina, Sami Frey, andClaude Brasseur, Une FemmeMarie(1965) with MachaMril andBernardNol, Alphaville(1965) withKarina, Eddi Constantineand Akim Tamiroff, and Pierrot le Fou (1965) with Karina and Belmondo. Sixof thefilmshavebeen shown in America.The first calledBreathlesshere, is by now establishedas anart-house class; the eighth, The Married Woman,has had a mixed reception; but the others, under the titles A WomanIs aWoman, My Lifeto Live, Contempt,and Bandof Outsiders,havebeenbother critical and box-officeflops.Thebrillianceof A Bout de Souffleis now obvious toeverybodyandI shall explainmyesteem forVivreSaVie.While I am not claiming that all his other work is on the same level of excellence, there is no film of Godard's which does not have manyremarkablepassages of thehighest quality.Theobtuseness of serious critics heretothemerits of Le Mpris,adeeply flawedbut nonetheless extraordinarily ambitious andoriginal film, seems tome particularly lamentable.

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"Thecinemais still aform of graphic art," Cocteauwrotein his Journals."Through its mediation, I writein pictures, and secure formy own ideology a powerin actual fact.I show what otherstell.In Orphe, for example, I donot narrate the passingthroughmirrors; I showit, andinsome manner, I prove it.The means I use are not important, if mycharacters perform publiclywhat I want them toperform. The greatest power of a filmis tobe indisputable withrespect ot the actions it determines andwhichare carriedout before our eyes. It is normal for the witness of an action to transform it for his own use, to distort it, and to testify to it inaccurately.But the action was carried out, and is carried out as often as the machine resurrects it.It combats inexact testimonies and false police reports."

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All art maybetreatedas a modeof proof, anassertionof accuracyinthespirit of maximum vehemence.Any workof art maybe seenas anattempt tobe indisputable withrespect tothe actions it represents.

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Proof differs from analysis.Proof establishes that somethinghappened. Analysis shows whyit happened. Proof is a mode of argument that is, by definition, complete; but the price of its completeness is that proof is always formal.Only what is already contained in the beginning is proven at the end. In analysis, however, there are always further angles of understanding, new realms of causality.Analysis is substantive.Analysis is amodeof argument that is, bydefinition, always incomplete; it is, properlyspeaking, interminable. The extent towhicha givenworkof art is designedas a mode of proof is, of course, a matter of proportion. Surely, some works of art are more directedtowardproof, more basedonconsiderations of form, thanothers. But still, I shouldargue, all art tends towardthe formal, towarda completeness that must be formal rather than substantiveendingsthat exhibit graceand design, and only secondarily convince in termsof psychological motives or social forces.(Thinkof the barelycrediblebut immenselysatisfyingendings of Shakespeare's plays, particularly thecomedies.)In great art, it is formor, as I call it here, thedesireto proverather than the desire toanalyzethat is ultimatelysovereign.It is form that allows one toterminate.

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Anart concernedwithproof is formal intwosenses.Its subject is the form (aboveandbeyondthematter) of events, and the forms(above and beyond the matter) of consciousness. Itsmeansare formal; that is, they include a conspicuous element of design (symmetry, repetition, inversion, doubling, etc).This can be true even when the work isso laden with "content" that it virtually proclaimsitself asdidacticlike Dante's Divine Comedy.

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Godard's films are particularly directed toward proof, rather than analysis. Vivre Sa Vie is an exhibit, a demonstration. It shows thatsomething happened, notwhy it happened. It exposesthe inexorability of an event. For this reason, despiteappearances, Godard's films aredrastically untopical.Anart concerned withsocial, topical issues can never simply show that something is.It must indicate how. It must show why.But the whole point of Vivre SaVieis that it does not explainanything.It rejects causality.(Thus, the ordinarycausal sequence of narrative isbroken in Godard'sfilm by the extremely arbitrary decomposition of the story into twelve episodes episodes which are serially, rather than causally, related.)Vivre Sa Vie is certainly not "about" prostitution, anymore thanLe Petit Soldatis "about" the AlgerianWar.Neither does GodardinVivre SaViegive usany explanation, of an ordinary recognizable sort, asto what led the principal character, Nana, everto becomeaprostitute. Is it becauseshecouldn't borrow 2,000 francs toward her back rent from her former husbandor from oneof her fellow clerks at therecordstoreinwhichsheworks andwas lockedout of her apartment? Hardlythat.At least, not that alone.But we scarcelyknow anymore thanthis.All Godardshows us is that she did become a prostitute.Again, Godard does not show us why, at the end of the film, Nana's pimp Raoul "sells" her, or what has happenedbetweenthem, or what lies behindthe final gunbattle inthe street in whichNana is killed.He onlyshows us that she is sold, that she does die.He does not analyze.He proves.

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Godarduses twomeans of proof inVivre SaVie.He gives us a collection of images illustrating what he wants to prove, and a seriesof "texts" explaining it.In keeping the two elementsseparate, Godard'sfilm employsa genuinelynovel means of exposition.

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Godard's intentionis Cocteau's.But Godarddiscerns difficulties, where Cocteausaw none.What Cocteauwanted to show, to be indisputable with reference to, was magicthings like the reality of fascination, the eternal possibilityof metamorphosis.(Passingthroughmirrors, etc.)What Godardwishes toshow is the opposite: the antimagical, thestructureof lucidity.This is why Cocteauusedtechniques that, bymeans of thealikeness of images, bind together eventsto form a total sensuous whole.Godard makes no effort to exploit the beautiful in this sense. He uses techniques that would fragment, dissociate, alienate, break up. Example: the famous staccatoediting(jumpcut et al.)in ABout de Souffle.Another example: the division of Vivre SaVieintotwelve episodes, withlongtitles like chapter headings at the beginningof eachepisode, tellingus more or less what is goingtohappen. The rhythmof Vivre SaVieis stopping-and-starting.(Inanother style, this is alsothe rhythmof Le Mpris.) Hence, Vivre SaVieis dividedintoseparate episodes.Hence, too, the repeatedhaltingandresumingof the music in the credit sequence; and the abrupt presentation of Nana's facefirst in left profile, then (without transition) full face, then (again without transition) in right profile. But, above all, there is the dissociation of word and image which runs through the entire film, permitting quite separate accumulations of intensity for both idea and feeling.

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Throughout thehistory of film, imageand word haveworked in tandem. In thesilent film, thewordset downinthe formof titles alternatedwith, literallylinkedtogether, the sequences of images.Withthe advnet of sound films, imageand word becamesimultaneous rather than successive. Whilein silent films theword could beeither comment ontheactionor dialogueby theparticipants intheaction, insound films theword became (except for documentaries) almost exclusively, certainlypreponderantlydialogue. Godardrestores the dissociationof wordandimage characteristic of silent film, but ona new level.Vivre Sa Vieis clearly composedof twodiscretetypes of material, theseenandtheheard. But inthedistinguishingof these materials, Godard is very ingenious, even playful.One variant is the television documentary of cinmavritstyleof EpisodeVIIIwhileone is taken, first ona car ridethroughParis, thensees, inrapidmontage, 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 inEpisode XII, where the happybanalities exchanged by Nanaand her younglover areprojected onthescreenintheform of subtitles.Thespeechof loveis not heardat all.

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Thus, VivreSa Viemust beseenas anextensionof aparticular cinematic genre: thenarrated film. Thereare twostandardforms of this genre, whichgive us images plus a text.Inone, animpersonal voice, the author, as it were, narrates the film. In the other, we hear the interio monologue of the main character, narrating the events as we see them happeningtohim. Twoexamples of thefirst type, featuringananonymous commentingvoicewhichoversees theaction, are Resnais' L'Anne Dernire MarienbadandandMelville's Les Enfants Terribles.An example of the second type, featuring an interior monologue of the main character is Franju's ThrseDesqueyroux.Probably the greatest xamples of thesecond type, inwhichtheentireactionis recited by thehero areBresson's LeJournal d'un Cur de CampagneandUnConamn Mort s'est chapp. Godardusedthe technique broughtoperfectionbyBressoninhis secondfilm, Le Petit Soldat,made in 1960 in Geneva though not released (because for three years it was banned by the French censors) until 1963.The film is the sequence of the reflections of the hero, Bruno Forestier, a man embroiled in a right-wing terrorist organization who is assigned the job of killing a Swiss agent for the FLN. As the film opens, one hears Forestier's voicesaying: "The time for actionis passed.I havegrownolder.The time for reflectionhas come." Brunois aphotographer.Hesays, "Tophotographafaceis tophotgraphy thesoul behind it.Photography is truth.And

the cinema is the truth twenty-four times a second."This central passage in Le Petit Soldat,in which Brunomeditates onthe relationbetweenthe image andtruth, anticipates the complexmeditationonthe relation betweenlanguage andtruthinVivre SaVie.

Since the storyitself inLe Petit Soldat,the factual connections between the characters, are mostly conveyed through Forestier's monologue, Godard's camera is freed to become an instrument of contemplationof certain aspects of events, andof characters.Quiet "events"Karina's face, thefaadeof buildings, passingthroughthe citybycararestudiedbythe camera, ina waythat somewhat isolates the violent action.The images seem arbitrary sometimes, expressing a kind of emotional neutrality; at other times, they indicate an intense involvement.It is as though Godard hears, then looks at what he hears. In Vivre SaVie,Godard takes this technique of hearing first, then seeing, to new levels of complexity.There is no longer a single unified point of view, either the protagonist's voice (as in LePetit Soldat)or a godlike narrator, but aseries of documents (texts, narrations, quotations, excerpts, set pieces) of various description. These are primarilywords; but theymayalsobe worldless sounds, or evenwordless images.

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All the essentials of Godard's technique are present inthe openingcredit sequence andinthe first episode.The credits occur over a left profile viewof Nana, sodarkthat it is almost a silhouette.(The title of the filmis Vivre SaVie.AFilm inTwelve Episodes.)As the credits continue, she is shown full face, and then from the right side, still indeepshadow. Occasionallyshe blinks or shifts her headslightly(as if it were uncomfortable toholdstill solong), or wets her lips.Nana is posing.She is beingseen. Next wearegiventhefirst titles."EpisodeI: Nanaand Paul.NanaFeels LikeGivingUp."Thentheimages begin, but theemphasis is on what is heard. Thefilm proper opens in themidst of aconversation between Nana and a man; they are seated at the counter of a caf; their backs are to the camera; besides their conversation, wehear thenoises of thebarman, and snatches of thevoices of other customers.As they talk, always facingaway from thecamera, welearnthat theman(Paul) is Nana's husband, that they haveachild, andthat she has recentlyleft bothhusbandandchildtotrytobecome anactress.Inthis brief public reunion(it is never clear on whose initiative it came about) Paul is stiff and hostile, but wants her to come back; Nana is oppressed, desperate, andrevoltedbyhim. After weary, bitter words, Nana says toPaul, "Themoreyoutalk, the less it means."Throughout this opening sequence, Godard systematically deprives the viewer.There is no cross-cutting.The viewer is not allowedtosee, tobecome involved.He is onlyallowedtohear. Onlyafter NanaandPaul breakoff their fruitless conversationtoleavethe counter andplaya gameat the pinball machine, do we see them. Even here, the emphasisremainson hearing. Asthey go on talking, we continue tosee Nana andPaul mainlyfrom behind.Paul has stoppedpleadingandbeingrancorous.He tells Nana of the droll theme his father, a schoolteacher, receivedfrom one of his pupils onanassignedtopic, The Chicken. "Thechickenhas aninsideandanoutside," wrotethelittlegirl."Removetheoutsideandyoufindtheinside. Remove the inside, andyoufindthe soul."Onthese words, the image dissolves andthe episode ends.

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The storyof the chickenis the first of many"texts" inthe film whichestablishwhat Godardwants tosay.For the story of the chicken, of course, is the story of Nana. (There is a pun in Frenchthe Frenc poulebeing somethinglike, but agood deal rougher than, theAmerican"chick.") In VivreSaVie,we witness the stripping down of Nana. The film openswith nana having divested herself of heroutside: herold identity. Hernew identity, within a few episodes, is to be that of a prostitute.But Godard's interest is in neither the psychology nor the sociologyof prostitution.He takes upprostitutionas the most radical metaphor for the separatingout of the elements of a life as a testing ground, a crucible for the study of what is essential and what is superfluous in a life.

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The whole of Vivre SaViemaybe seenas a text.It is a text in, a studyof, lucidity; it is about seriousness. Andit "uses" texts (inthe moreliteral sense), inall but twoof its twelveepisodes.The littlegirl's essayon the chicken told by Paul in Episode I.The passage from the pulp magazine story recited by the salesgirl in Episode II.("You exaggerate the importance of logic.") The excerpt from Dreyer's Jeanned'Arc which Nana watchesin Episode III.The story of the theft of 1,000 francswhich Nana relatesto the police inspectorin Episode IV.(We learnthat her full name is Nana Kleinandthat she was bornin1940.)Yvette's storyhow she was abandonedbyRaymondtwoyears agoandNana's speechinreply("I am responsible") inEpisode VI.The letter of application Nana composes to the madam of a brothel in Episode VII.The documentary narration of the life and routine of the prostitute in Episode VIII.The record of dance music in Episode IX.The conversation with the philosopher in Episode XI.The excerpt from the story by Edgar Allan Poe ("The Oval Portrait") read aloud byLuigi inEpisode XII.

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The most elaborate, intellectually, of all the texts inthe filmis the conversationinEpisode XI betweenNana and a philosopher (playedbythe philosopher, Brice Parain) ina caf.They discuss the nature of language.Nana asks whyone can't live without words; Parainexplains that it is because talkingequals thinking, andthinkingtalking, and thereis no lifewithout thought.It is not aquestion of speaking or not speaking, but of speaking well. Speakingwell demands anascetic discipline (une ascse), detachment.One has to understand, for one thing, that there is no going straight at the truth.One needs error. Early in their conversation, Parain relates the story of Dumas' Porthos, the man of action, whose first thought killed him. (Running away from a dynamite charge he had planted, Porthos suddenly wondered how one couldwalk, how anyone ever placedone foot infront of the other.He stopped.The dynamite exploded.He was killed.)There is a sense inwhichthis story, too, like the storyof the chicken, is about Nana.Andthroughboth the story and the Poe tale told in the next (and last) episode, we are being preparedformally, not substantivelyfor Nana's death.

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Godard takes his motto for this film-essay on freedom and responsibility from Montaigne: "Lend yourself to others; giveyourself toyourself."Thelife of the prostitute is, of course, the most radical metaphor for the act of lendingoneself to others.But if weask, how has Godard shown us Nanakeeping herself for herself, the answer is: hehasnotshown it.Hehas, rather, expounded on it.Wedon't know Nana's motives except at a distance, byinference.The film eschews all psychology; there is noprobingof states of feeling, of inner anguish. Nanaknows herself tobefree, Godardtells us.But that freedom has nopsychological interior.Freedom is not aninner, psychological somethingbut more like physical grace.It is beingwhat, whoone is.InEpisode I, Nana saysto Paul, "I want to die."In EpisodeII, we see herdesperately trying to borrow money, trying unsuccessfullytoforce her waypast the concierge andget intoher ownapartment.InEpisodeIII, we see her weepinginthe cinema over Jeanne d'Arc.InEpisode IV, at the police station, she weeps againas she relates the humiliatingincident of thetheft of 1,000 francs."I wishI were someoneelse," shesays.But inEpisodeV ("On the Street.The First Client") Nana has become what she is. She has entered the road that leads to her affirmationandtoher death.Onlyas prostitute dowe see a Nana whocanaffirm herself.This is the meaningof Nana's speechtoher fellow prostitute Yvette inEpisode VI, inwhichshe declares serenely, "I am responsible.I turn my head, I am responsible.I lift my hand, I am responsible." Beingfree means beingresponsible.One is free, andtherefore responsible, whenone realizes that things are as theyare.Thus, the speechtoYvette ends withthe words: "Aplate is a plate.Amanis a man.Life is ... life."

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That freedom has nopsychological interiorthat the soul is somethingtobe foundnot uponbut after stripping awaythe "inside" of a personis the radical spiritual doctrine whichVivre SaVieillustrates.

One would guessthat Godard isquite aware of the difference between hissense of the "soul" and the traditional Christian one.The difference is precisely underscored by the quotation from Dreyer's Jeanne d'Arc; for the scene which we see is the one in which the young priest (played by Antonin Artaud) comes to tell Jeanne(MlleFalconetti) that sheis tobeburnedat thestake.Her martyrdom, Jeanneassures thedistraught priest, is really her deliverance. While the choice of a quotation from a film does distance our emotional involvement with these ideas and feelings, the reference to martyrdom is not ironic in this context.Prostitution, as Vivre SaVieallows us tosee it, has entirelythe character of anordeal."Pleasure isn't all fun," as the title to Episode Xannounces laconically.AndNana does die. The twelve episodes of Vivre SaVieare Nana's twelve stations of the cross.But inGodard's film the values of sanctity and martyrdom aretransposed to atotally secular plane. Godard offers us Montaigneinstead of Pascal, somethingakintothe moodandintensityof Bressonianspiritualitybut withCatholicism.

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The one false stepinVivre SaViecomes at the end, whenGodardbreaks the unityof his film byreferringtoit from the outside, as maker.Episode XII begins with Nana and Luigi in a room together; he is a young man with whom she has apparentlyfalleninlove (we have seenhim once before, inEpisode IX, whenNana meets him in a billiardparlor andflirts withhim).At first the scene is silent, andthe dialogue--"Shall we goout?" "Whydon't youmove inwithme?" etc. renderedinsubtitles.The Luigi, lyingonthe bed, begins toreadaloudfrom Poe's "The Oval Portrait," a storyabout anartist engagedinpaintinga portrait of his wife; he strives for the perfect likeness, but at the moment he finally achieves it his wife dies.The scene fades out on these words, and opens to show Raoul, Nana's pimp, roughly forcing her through the courtyard of her apartment house, pushing her into a car. After a car ride (one or two brief images), Raoul hands Nana over to another pimp; but it is discoveredthat themoneyexchangedis not enough, guns aredrawn, Nanais shot, andthelast imageshows the cars speeding away and Nana lying dead in the street. What is objectionable here is not the abruptness of the ending.It is the fact that Godardis clearlymakinga referenceoutsidethefilm, to thefact that theyoungactress who plays Nana, AnnaKarina, is his wife.Heis mockinghis owntale, whichis unforgivable.It amounts toa peculiar failure of nerve, as if Godarddidnot dare to let us have Nana's deathin all its horrifying arbitrariness-but had to provide, at the last moment, a kind of subliminal causality.(The womanis mywife.The artist whoportrays his wife kills her.Nana must die.)

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This one lapse aside, Vivre SaVieseems tome a perfect film. That is, it sets out todosomethingthat is both noble and intricate, and wholly succeeds in doing it.Godard is perhaps the only director today who is interested in "philosophical films" and possesses an intelligence and discretion equal to the task.Other directors havehad their "views" on contemporary society and thenatureof our humanity; and sometimes their films survive the ideasthey propose. Godard isthe first directorfully to grasp the fact that, in orderto deal seriously with ideas, onemust createanew film languagefor expressingthemif theideas areto havean suppleness andcomplexity.This he has beentryingtodoindifferent ways: inLe Petit Soldat,Vivre SaVie,Les Carabiniers,Le Mpris,Une Femme Marie,and AlphavilleVivre SaViebeing, I think, his most successful film. For this conception, andthe formidable bodyof workinwhichhe has pursuedit, Godardis inmyopinionthe most important director tohave emergedinthe last tenyears.

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