Vivre sa vie is of course an early Godard, and extends the theme of prostitution in his second (ten-minute) short, La Coquette (1955). Its main characters are Nana Kleinfrankenheim (Anna Karina), Raoul (Sady Rebbot), Paul (André S. Labarthe) and Yvette (Guylaine Schlumberger). Brecht's influence with its distancing effects has often been noted, although Douglas Morrey in his book Jean-Luc Godard in the 'French Film Directors' series believes that he is just as much influenced by Bresson: perhaps the twelve tableaux relate more to the stations of the cross; there's Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, and Bresson released Le Procès de Jeanne d'Arc just before Vivre as vie; Godard wanted to adapt Bernanos's novel Mouchette to film, which Bresson did later, etc.
The film begins with a Brechtian distancing device though as we see, in one of the many café scenes, Nana (the reference to Zola is too obvious) talking to Paul just after leaving him, only both of them are turned towards the bar and we only see their backs. In the second tableau, which is set in the record store where Nana works part-time, the camera tracks, as Morrey says, along the shelves of vinyl albums as it will later do along a wall lined with prostitutes: everything is consumer capitalism, including human bodies. Nana tries without success to borrow some money and in the end loses her accommodation through not paying the rent.
Death is frequently present, and Nana is moved to tears as she watches the silent La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, where Jeanne learns that she is to be burned at the stake. After this, she talks to a photographer in a bar who wants to take partly unclothed shots of her, suggesting that it could be the start of her career as an actress, which she aspires to. She agrees.
In the fourth tableau Nana is in a police station being cross-examined because a woman has complained about her: the woman dropped a 1000 franc note, but Nana gave it back to her and the woman probably only made the complaint because she thought Nana was a prostitute. Nana admits that she has no fixed address and mainly stays with men friends. In tableau five Nana does in fact take her first customer to a hotel, although the encounter is obviously painfully and amateurishly done on the part of Nana.
In tableau six Nana is out on the street again and meets her friend Yvette, who is a prostitute. They go to a bar and Yvette introduces her to Raoul, a pimp. But Raoul leaves and doesn't return, there are gunshots outside and a man is shot: another reminder of death. In tableau seven Nana is in a bar ostensibly overlooking a boulevard, although the people and the traffic are stationary: it looks like a huge mural, and is probably meant to be another distancing effect. Here Nana writes (very slowly and with a few minor errors) to a brothel keeper but is interrupted by Raoul who proposes that he become her pimp.
Godard was inspired to write Vivre sa vie by Marcel Sacotte's book La Prostitution, and in Raoul's car with Nana we hear Godard himself (voice off) quoting from the text about medical controls, hygiene, finding customers, prices, the risk of pregnancy, etc. And so Nana learns her trade.
Death appears again in a philosophical scene Nana has in a bar with Brice Parain (Godard's former philosophy teacher), when the philosopher speaks to her about the painful death of Porthos in Vingt ans après. And in the final tableau we again have Godard's voice off reading a passage from Poe's short story 'The Oval Portrait', which ends in the death of a woman. And of course the film ends when Nana wants to leave Raoul's web of prostitution, but is caught between two pimps and shot dead. An very powerful film with not a hint of sentimentality.
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