 (1962 - 85 min) My Life to Live (French: Vivre sa vie : film en douze tableaux; To Live Her Life: A Film in Twelve Scenes) is a 1962 French New Wave drama film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. In the United Kingdom, the film was released under the title It's My Life.
Nana (Anna Karina), a beautiful Parisian in her early twenties, leaves her husband and infant son hoping to become an actress. Without money, beyond what she earns as a shopgirl, and unable to enter acting, she elects to earn better money as a prostitute. Soon she has a pimp, Raoul, who after an unspecified period agrees to sell Nana to another pimp. During the exchange, the pimps argue and Nana is killed in a gun battle. Nana's short life on film is told in 12 brief episodes, each preceded by a written intertitle.
Author and cultural critic Susan Sontag described it as "a perfect film" and "one of the most extraordinary, beautiful, and original works of art that I know of." According to critic Roger Ebert in his essay on the film in the book The Great Movies, "The effect of the film is astonishing. It is clear, astringent, unsentimental, abrupt." |
