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Movies / On DVD / My Life to Live
My Life to Live

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My Life to Live (1962)

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Reviews Counted:21

Fresh:19

Rotten:2

Average Rating:7.6/10

Runtime: 85 mins

Genre: Foreign Films

Synopsis: MY LIFE TO LIVE is Jean-Luc Godard's political, philosophical and, above all, rapturous portrait of a Parisian prostitute who attempts to take control of her own life and understand the meaning of... MY LIFE TO LIVE is Jean-Luc Godard's political, philosophical and, above all, rapturous portrait of a Parisian prostitute who attempts to take control of her own life and understand the meaning of freedom. Godard's technically audacious film is an invigorating masterpiece that strikingly blends original film techniques with genuine human emotion, including long takes, asymmetrical framing, and jarring inter-titles. Anna Karina is Nana, a distraught young woman who leaves her husband and child with the hopes of becoming a big-screen actress. Realizing the futility of making her dream a reality, she instead is goaded into prostitution by a persuasive pimp. Nana begins to question the decisions she has made, sparking even greater personal confusion and leading toward an inevitably somber conclusion. The tale is divided into 12 chapters that combine a variety of disparate storytelling genres--ranging from Brechtian to B-movie gangster. MY LIFE TO LIVE is a hallmark of the French New Wave, an example of critic-turned-director Godard at the peak of his craft. [More]

Starring: Anna Karina, Sady Rebbot, Andre S. Labarthe, Guylaine Schlumberger

Starring: Anna Karina, Sady Rebbot, Andre S. Labarthe, Guylaine Schlumberger, Monique Messine

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Screenwriter: Jean-Luc Godard
Producer: Pierre Braunberger
Composer: Michel Legrand

[See More Credits]

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Release:

Aug 11, 1998

No Details Exist
 
 

Reviews for My Life to Live

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1 - 20 (sorted by date)
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Godard frames and edits his shots, moves the camera, uses music, and deploys his actors in ways that still seem radical -- even as several generations of directors since have cribbed and stolen from him.

Full Review Source: Philadelphia Inquirer | comment Comment
11/13/08
Steven Rea
Steven Rea
Philadelphia Inquirer
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Godard mixes titles, unusual use of sound, and long scenes of dialog. He is brilliantly served by his wife, Anna Karina, in this film. Karina gives the girl a ring of truth and depth.

Full Review Source: Variety | comment Comment
08/11/08
Variety Staff
Variety Staff
Variety
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Jean Luc-Godard’s third feature fuses trademark stylistic playfulness with a stark portrait of the dehumanising nature of capitalist society.

Full Review Source: Total Film | comment Comment
08/11/08
Tom Dawson
Tom Dawson
Total Film

Jean-Luc Godard’s fourth film is a heartfelt, headstrong attempt to push his own concept of a deconstructed cinema even further into the stratosphere.

Full Review Source: Time Out New York | comment Comment
05/29/08
David Fear
David Fear
Time Out New York

Star Anna Karina was in the brutal early rounds of marriage to her director, who was never more doting and egghead-condescending than in this showpiece.

Full Review Source: Village Voice | comment Comment
05/27/08
Nick Pinkerton
Nick Pinkerton
Village Voice
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

This 1962 film isn't the most stimulating of Godard's early work, but it does show him beginning to pull away from traditional cutting patterns and sequence arrangement.

Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | comment Comment
10/24/07
Dave Kehr
Dave Kehr
Chicago Reader
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

You can see now what Bernard Rose, Mike Figgis, Lars von Trier and all the other DV-fixated filmmakers are striving for; they're trying to reclaim the freedom, the weightlessness, of cinema. Bravo to them.

Full Review Source: Observer [UK] | comment Comment
10/24/07
Ryan Gilbey
Ryan Gilbey
Observer [UK]

Invigorating, revolutionary, joyfully iconoclastic and spontaneous.

Full Review Source: Channel 4 Film | comment Comment
10/24/07
Fran Hortop
Fran Hortop
Channel 4 Film

truly exhilarating

Full Review Source: Perihelion Journal | comment Comment
09/06/06
Jay Antani
Jay Antani
Perihelion Journal

Twelve Brechtian tableaux chronicle the life and death of a whore, starting out as a documentary on prostitution, ending as a Monogram B movie.

Full Review Source: Time Out | comment Comment
01/26/06
Tom Milne
Tom Milne
Time Out

Highly innovative.

Full Review Source: Ozus' World Movie Reviews | comment Comment
10/23/05
Dennis Schwartz
Dennis Schwartz
Ozus' World Movie Reviews

Mr. Godard is a bold experimenter, but it's time he picked himself a stronger theme.

Full Review Source: New York Times | comment Comment
05/09/05
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
New York Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

No review available.

comment Comment
03/24/05
Andy Klein
Andy Klein
Los Angeles CityBeat

No review available.

comment Comment
12/18/04
Emanuel Levy
Emanuel Levy
EmanuelLevy.Com

Only in Paris.

Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com | comment Comment
04/20/03
Christopher Null
Christopher Null
Filmcritic.com

No review available.

comment Comment
01/25/03
Michael Szymanski
Michael Szymanski
Zap2it.com

There's a passion there that's hard to define except in terms of superb, totally fluid and, for the time, completely original and audacious film-making.

Full Review Source: Guardian [UK] | comment Comment
08/03/02
Derek Malcolm
Derek Malcolm
Guardian [UK]

No review available.

comment Comment
07/29/02
Philip Martin
Philip Martin
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Godard never lets us forget the artificiality of what we're watching, turning the film into a masterful meditation on cinema, capitalism, and sex.

Full Review Source: BBC | comment Comment
07/09/02
Jamie Russell
Jamie Russell
BBC

This is a great movie, and I am not surprised to find Susan Sontag describing it as 'one of the most extraordinary, beautiful, and original works of art that I know of.'

Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times | comment Comment
04/11/01
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Chicago Sun-Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
 
 
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