My Life to Live

My Life to Live (1962) is a film by Jean-Luc Godard. Its original French title is Vivre sa Vie: Film en Douze Tableaux. The title translates as 'To Live Her Life: A Film in Twelve Tableaux', but in Britain it was translated as It's My Life, and in North America, My Life to Live. British re-releases now tend to use the French title.

The film stars Godard's then wife Anna Karina as Nana, a Parisian woman with financial trouble who decides to become a prostitute. Nana believes she makes this choice of her own free will, but the film emphasises the social structure that forces the poor into such situations, and builds to a tragic conclusion.

The film looks naturalistic, as it was filmed on location in Paris with hand-held photography by Raoul Coutard, but Godard inserts Brechtianian alienation devices: twelve intertitles appear before each of the film's 'chapters' explaining what will happen next, and Godard frequently breaks cinematic conventions, by using jump cuts and occasionally filming characters from behind when they are talking.

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