Vivre Sa Vie

Vivre sa vie (1962) is Jean-Luc Godard's drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Told in twelve numbered tableaux, it follows a young Parisian named Nana who leaves her husband, dreams of acting, sells records behind a shop counter, and gradually slides into the city's underworld.

Anna Karina plays Nana stripped of vanity, her face becoming the real landscape of the picture. Godard fractures the story into chapters, drops in documentary-style intertitles about the trade of prostitution, sits Nana in a cinema weeping at Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc, and stages a long café conversation with an old philosopher about words, lies and silence.

This is early Godard at the heart of the French New Wave: Raoul Coutard's restless handheld camera, a spare Michel Legrand theme, cuts that keep puncturing the illusion of the screen. Cool in its form yet scalding underneath, partly because Karina was Godard's wife when they made it. Less an entertainment than an experience, and a near-perfect doorway into sixties cinema. Stream Vivre sa vie (1962) online on iFILM.