Vision Representation and Cinema

Vision, Representation and Cinema

Jean-Luc Godard's My Life to Live: Neo-modernist film language

My Life to Live tells the story of Nana, who leaves her hopelessly bourgeois husband and infant son with the vague hopes of becoming an actress. Nana seems less to aspire to be in the movies than to make her life into a movie, however. She is bored with her suburban life and entranced with all of the garish trappings of commercialism of 1960s Paris. Anna first finds work in a shop, but gradually falls deeper and deeper into the dredges of society until she becomes a prostitute and is murdered in argument between her pimp and another pimp at the end of the film. Entering into prostitution does not seem to upset Nana, the film suggests that Nana takes a detached view of her life, and that making love to men she does not love is no different than her joyless, loveless marriage.

The film deploys a cool, distanced technique, as if Nana consciously knows she is playing a role. Her articulated dream of becoming an actress, although not realized in a literal sense in the film, is realized instead by the actress playing Nana 'acting' a part -- of the bored housewife in one frame, and of a cool, loveless yet beautiful woman in another section of the store. Nana seems to 'stand in' for entire group of frustrated, bored women, who are not content with their lots as wives and mothers but have no venue to exercise their sexual frustrations in conventional French society. Anna is not unique, but representational. The viewer is not encouraged to identify with Nana, merely observe her. She is not unique, but as much a commercialized artifact in her appearance and her dreams as the juke box that spits out songs in the corner of a cafe. The actress playing Nana is named Anna, coyly suggesting a similarity between the two, given that Nana uses the same letters as 'Anna.'

The film has a rough, deliberately amateurish quality in the way that it is filmed, although its apparent amateurism is an act of artfulness by its director. The film has titles that segment the action and inform the viewer as to what is going on, as in a play or a 19th century novel about a woman's ruin and fall from bourgeois grace. Characters talk to the camera and philosophize, much like omniscient narrators in a novel. The lighting and presentation is deliberately harsh, as if the viewer is watching a play rather than a slice of life. The quick cuts and distanced technique make Nana's death less pitiable and more a fascinating spectacle. The director, at one point, interjects his own narration into the film, talking over the words of Nana and a man she is debating in a cafe. Characters talk about abstract subjects at surprising points, in a manner that does not seem 'real.' Even the harsh, geometric presentation of Nana's hair, face, and lips seems like a construction, rather than an attempt to show reality.

"The film was made by sort of a second presence...camera is not just a recording device but a (ital) looking (unital) device, that by its movements makes us aware that it sees her [Nana], wonders about her, glances first here and then there, exploring the space she occupies, speculating" (Ebert 2001). The story of Nana is melodramatic, and if the story was taken literally, it would be a sentimental tragedy. But the ironic, distanced view of her life fascinated by the wandering, voyeuristic eye of the camera causes the reader to view Nana as an object, in a dispassionate manner. The camera is clearly telling a story through the eyes of a director, rather than telling a story about a romantic heroine.