Another wonderful work from Jean-Luc Godard is added to the Criterion inventory, and the Blu-ray of Vivre sa vie (available from yesterday, 20 April) is yet another credit to their name in the black & white HD transfer field. The 12-tableux tale of Nana the would-be actress, does-become prostitute (Anna Karina) is brusque and captivating, and there's yet to be a half-decent US release until now. Indelibly classic moments like Nana's dance in the pool hall and her solo viewing of Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc are now easy to find and experience for anyone.
The commentary track references Ophuls' Lola Montes (currently available from Criterion), a movie about a once free spirit now caged. Vivre sa vie deals very much in themes of imprisonment, but in contrast to Lola's predicament, Nana is jailed out in the open, unfettered. Nana continues trying to escape, only to plunge further into a labyrinth.
The 2001-recorded commentary track by scholar Adrian Martin is informative and clips right along with the 83-minute feature. The bits where he touches on the real-life strains in the marriage between Karina and Godard were particularly interesting to hear just a couple of months after working my way through Criterion's now-out-of-print Pierrot le fou disc.
The supplements paired with the feature are really rather ingenious, from the 2004 video interview with scholar Jean Narboni (conducted by historian Noel Simsolo) to a 1961-recorded one with Karina to excerpts from a 1961 French TV special on prostitution.
I'm not going to act like the names of the two scholars were familiar to me, since I had to look them up. Narboni appeared as an actor in Godard's 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (which I regret missing when it screened in Austin last summer) and as himself in Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinemateque. Simsolo appeared in Godard's In Praise of Love (1999) and has written volumes and volumes on many directors, from Hitchcock to Sacha Guitry (an Eclipse set of Guitry work is coming in July). Both men have contributed plenty of critical writing about the man. Their chat is insightful and interesting.
The vintage interview with Karina from Cinepanorama is fascinating, again, relative to my viewing of a much more recently-recorded one on the Pierrot release. As much as one would assume an artist would hold back or talk about people differently at one point than four or five decades later, Karina's demeanor and candor are surprisingly similar, with only minor revelations discovered after the passage of time. I'd consider it an interesting juxtaposition to chronologically watch Vivre and Pierrot and then the respective supplemental interviews.
The prostitution TV special and the illustrated essay on the book that inspired the film (La Prostitution) are among the most unique and brillianty-paired supplements on recent releases. That isn't to downplay the work done on other titles, but rather, to highlight how ingenious and surprising Criterion can be even relative to their rich track record. The booklet foregoes a lengthy modern critical essay in favor of a short one from Michael Atkinson paired with vintage writing. It comes off like a masterfully-planned, multi-course literary feast.
Amazon is selling the Blu-ray edition for $29.99.
I hope very much that the reverse chronological order we've seen Criterion release Godard's films on Blu-ray indicates that we can soon see Band of Outsiders and Breathless upgrades. The latter's restored print is currently touring the US.