It’s the birthday of French New Wave star Anna Karina, muse to many, fascinating onscreen persona, director of her own films. Anna Karina died in 2019, and you felt the loss in an almost palpable way, particularly in the New York film world.
How to describe her accomplishment? It was an accomplishment of Persona. Which means it is hers and hers alone. Her “persona” onscreen is so fluid that it’s never just one thing: you think you understand what a moment IS, but it shifts too quickly into something else … she has flitted onward, out of reach, and it all happens at the speed of thought. She was so alive onscreen you flat out just couldn’t keep up. “Alive” doesn’t mean just one thing, though. “Alive” doesn’t just look one way. Karina could be vivacious but could then be totally remote a second later. She could break your heart. She could draw you to her, while at the same time something in you might hold back, intimidated, frightened.
What can I say.
She was a great great movie star.
I use those words deliberately.
If you are familiar with my work, you know my fascination in stardom and Persona. Karina was in the Persona tradition. Which is not to say she did not transform.
Richard Brody, at The New Yorker wrote, in his article The Special Presence of Anna Karina:
Working with Godard, Karina identified not with characters but with herself, perhaps even more fully on camera than in private life—to create an enduring idea of herself. Karina didn’t become the characters she played; they became her. In this regard, her work with Godard (like that of other actors in his films) is close to the achievement of Joan Crawford, John Wayne, or other Hollywood icons whose limitations and artistry are inseparable.
This is very very important.
And the French filmmakers of the time recognized it, were inspired by it, wanted to point their camera at her. Jean-luc Godard wasn’t the only New Wave director inspired by her lightning-flashing-in-a-cloudy-sky changeability. (The two of them got married. I mean, they were the hippest most gorgeous couple on the planet).
Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina
She collaborated with Agnes Varda, appearing in a couple of shorts, as well as Cleo from 5 to 7. She worked with Jacques Rivette. Eric Rohmer. She was in Roger Vadim’s La Ronde! She was in Visconti’s The Stranger. She also directed.
But the 1960s … I mean, look at this run.
A Woman Is a Woman. (1961) (d. Jean-Luc Godard)
Her first with husband Godard was a romantic-comedy musical – although that’s hard to imagine – and she is adorable. In fact, her adorability is front and center. It is the whole point. You can feel Godard’s regard of her.
Cleo from 5 to 7. (1962) (d. Agnès Varda)
… where she and Jean-Luc Godard play the actors in the silent film, with maximum charm. Nobody was cooler than Godard and Karina during the time of their marriage (1961-1967). The ultimate “It” couple.
Vivre sa Vie (1962. d. Jean-Luc Godard)
Another vehicle for Karina, about a young woman’s descent into prostitution. One of the most unforgettable scenes is her sitting in a pitch-black movie theatre, watching Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, and having a MOMENT.
This piece by Michael Atkinson at Criterion is well worth reading.
Vivre sa Vie has my favorite shot of Anna Karina, which – if anything can – sums up her persona, or at least one aspect of it.
Le Petit Soldat (1963. d. Jean-Luc Godard)
A very frightening film, predictive of the more ideologically rigid political films Godard would swerve into at the end of the decade. Takes place during the war in Algeria, featuring a really terrifying torture scene – which looks real and makes me wonder how they did it – and Karina is the girl wandering through what amounts to almost a terrorist cell. There’s one unforgettable scene where the men all sit around talking and plotting, and she starts to dance through the room, caught up with herself. It’s another unnerving scene. What is real: her joy or their plotting? If both are real, then where does that leave us?
Band of Outsiders (1964. d. Jean-Luc Godard)
A masterpiece. So many famous scenes. When the threesome run through the Louvre, causing a ruckus:
The final dance number … No matter how many times I see it, I can’t quite put my finger on what’s so special. It fluctuates. Cinema this free, this bold, this “fuck the rules of engagement” … it’s why Godard was such a force.
Plus, this, which I think is the first shot of her – or almost. Band of Outsiders was my introduction to Anna Karina, and this moment stopped me dead in my tracks.
Alphaville (1965. d. Jean-Luc Godard)
Godard’s dystopian sci-fi movie, a wild experience, where Karina – programmed and atomized, completely “cut off” intellectually since her brain hasn’t been opened up, she is completely “other”, an unnerving presence, and very touching, since within her glimmers a spark of wanting to know more, to break free. Those direct-to-camera glances!
Pierrot le Fou (1965; d. Jean-Luc Godard)
My God, Godard was on a role. I’m trying to think of an equivalent. Maybe Howard Hawks in the late 30s and 1940s. One after the other after the other … the movies directed amounted to classics. This one, starring Karina and Jean Paul Belmondo – is one of my favorite Godards, hands down. A precursor to Badlands and Bonnie and Clyde, but following – of course (this is Godard after all) – American noirs like “They Live By Night” and This Gun for Hire and Gun Crazy, where a couple go on the run. They find a utopia. Utopias never last long. I love Karina as adjacent to or central to crime. Like Jean Seberg in Breathless. To Godard, women are not baubles or sidekicks. They give men a run for their money in amorality and criminality.
Made in U.S.A. (1966; d. Jean-Luc Godard)
Here, their marriage was falling apart. The ingratiating quality of Breathless is gone. He was moving into something else as the world exploded around him. A film that is about an investigation – hers – as well as a commentary on the uselessness of her search – and her dissociation from events as they unfold. Again: lots of direct to camera. Only this is very different from the flirtatious glances of, say, Vivre sa Vie:
This is such a daunting list, and we haven’t even left the 1960s yet. She worked – acting and directing – up to almost the very end. And she continued to travel and speak and present the films she made in the 60s, understanding the meaning they have for others. And she spoke very fondly of Jean-Luc Godard, even though it was a volatile relationship and ended badly. Most relationships end badly. She was a presence at film festivals and open to being interviewed. The love people had for her was intense and when she died the movie-loving community erupted into a frenzy of mourning.
In 2016, my pal Glenn Kenny interviewed Anna Karina over the phone for The New York Times:
Ms. Karina seems to regard her work with Mr. Godard with pride and affection. “It’s very touching, wherever I go, to see very young people come to the films, whether in Japan or South Korea or the United States or France,” she said. “The films feel like they are not old, or old fashioned; they still feel fresh and touch people. It’s a fantastic gift he gave to me.”
And to us.
