My Life to Live
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Movie Reviews of My Life to Live
Movie Review: Essential
Summary: 5 Stars
Although the basic DVD extras (a commentary track, for starters) are missing, the print quality is very good and the movie is absolutely great - first-quality Godard and Karina.Movie Review: mortir sa morte
Summary: 5 Stars
this movie has a lot of life in it. it's my favourite godard but i haven't seen 'em all so it's my favourite godard of the godard that i've seen.Movie Review: The film gets FIVE
Summary: 4 Stars
I give this DVD FOUR stars only because the transfer could have been better. With older films, especially foreign ones, the time and cost of providing a great transfer is too much unfortunately.This an amazing and powerful film that should be owned if you are a fan of Godard or of the French New Wave. For those who have not seen it and are looking for advice, I say: be cautious. This film is not for everyone, especially if you gravitate toward mainstream films. Don't expect Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.
The French New Wave era brought out a new kind of filmmaking. The films abandoned and sometimes appropriated traditional methods of narrative and formal esthetics, and used this technique as a critique of sorts. Vivre sa vie is no exception. Jean-Luc Godard made a film that requires something more from the viewer than just their attention span. The fairly simple plot of Vivre sa vie is expanded and turned around by various formal aspects of filmmaking made famous by French New Wave directors. Jump cuts, long takes, deep focus and slow pans are cornerstones of The French New Wave, but my interest lays with Vivre sa vie functions as a text, rather than a traditional narrative. By text, I mean that the film has a greater social theme and works more as an essay rather than a film¡Xsomething needed to be read.
Simply put, Vivre sa vie tells a story of a woman that leaves her husband and son, wants to get into the movies, ends up becoming a prostitute, falls in love, then wants to get out of the business. But there is so much more to the film and what is needed is your participation. Participation here, involves much more than a warm body and open eyes. Godard is using the narrative and formal techniques to tell something more about the social predicament of prostitutes and perhaps women in general. He accomplishes this by using very untraditional film techniques that enhances this film to a textual level.
When speaking of text, the notion of ¡§reading¡¨ is implied. The viewer needs to ¡§read¡¨ the scene, rather than just watch. Reading requires the viewer to make connections and draw conclusions from the juxtaposition of the words and images, and not just be told or shown what is really ¡§meaningful.¡¨
Watch the 12th chapter (The young man again¡Xthe oval portrait¡XRaoul sells Nana) when the young man reads the Poe story to Nana. I think that really captures the essence of the film.
Again, just because people think that this film is great, powerful and groundbreaking, doesn't mean that you will enjoy it. Be realistic.
Movie Review: The Finest of the French New Wave
Summary: 4 Stars
Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre Sa Vie (My Life to Live) is perhaps one of the greatest films ever made. It is surely the epitome of the French New Wave Movement that launched a totally new view of filmmaking to the world.
The film stars Anna Karina as Nana a young and beautiful woman of Paris. She is dissatisfied with her life as a young mother. She leaves her husband/boyfriend(?) Paul to take up the life of an actress. Having no money she resorts to prostitution, first on her own and then with a pimp named Raoul(Sady Rebbot).
The film is presented in twelve parts (Film en douze tableaux)each showing a segment of Nana's life each with its own title card. Each segment beginning or ending on a closeup of Karina's face.
This is truly unique cinema. Godard's framing and film grammar are the stuff of film school classes. The music by Michel Legrand helps set the tone to perfection and the black and white photography by Raoul Coutard is stunning. The camara is not so much a device but a character we are the camara as it is constantly moving and watching. It expresses the way one person views another. The film shows us the outside of characters without ever getting into motivation. Things, like life, just happen.
The disc by Fox Lorber is pretty bare bones but this is one film that needs to be seen by any serious student of film. Seek this one out. It has been said that it may be out of print soon as ideas of what make good film vary from year to year. This is a must have for any collection.
Movie Review: LOOKING FOR MR GODARD
Summary: 4 Stars
Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard is one of the directors who has changed the way we look at movies nowadays. Along with D.W. Griffith, Orson Welles and a few others, he's part of Movie History. With a dozen movies in the sixties, he has dynamited the classic cinematographical grammar. He's a Master. Period.There's still a little problem. Actually, nobody, except perhaps one or two Woody Allen clones in New-York, has the opportunity to watch his work. And there is a terrible rumor about him : he's an intellectual and his movies are 1) boring 2) hard to understand and 3) in french with english subtitles. You can't fight with that and I won't.
Just let me say that at least one scene of MY LIFE TO LIVE is a cinematographical pearl, one of these moments during which you feel that cinema is really the seventh art. Anna Karina's juvenile dance around the pools, shot alternatively with a subjective and an objective point of view is a scene to be watched again and again. And there are a lot of arty ideas or effects in MY LIFE TO LIVE that will be stolen from Godard by the new generation of filmmakers.
But discover this movie by yourself in this above-average DVD transfer. And don't worry if you don't understand all the subtleties of MY LIFE TO LIVE. I doubt Jean-Luc did.
A DVD for the curious ones.