Sexual Politics: Godard and Me
Anna Karina reminisces on life, work and beyond with the writer-director
It's fitting that in their final collaboration, Made in USA, Godard cast Karina as a "woman of action" — a character who, in the novel that is the film's source, is in fact male. That's because, for Godard, Karina was never an actress like all the others; she was in some ways a kind of female version of himself. Godard would go on to marry Bresson discovery Anne Wiazemsky, and collaborate with her on such noteworthy films as La Chinoise, Weekend and Sympathy for the Devil. But she wasn't like Karina, and Godard never asked that she try to be. Post-Karina, his work as a whole altered, shifting first into his disastrous "Maoist" period (Wind From the East, Vladimir and Rosa), and thankfully out of it into the cool, cryptic films of the last three decades (Nouvelle Vague, First Name: Carmen, Detective).
Karina, meanwhile, was as busy as her ex, working with filmmakers like Serge Gainsbourg, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Tony Richardson, exploring territory Godard never would have dared. Most noteworthy is Luchino Visconti's film of Camus' The Stranger, where we were treated to the sight of Karina's breasts for the very first time. Clearly Godard's intimacy and candor had their limits. As did his sensitivity, as is clear from the high regard Karina holds for a director who was his polar opposite — George Cukor, who in 1969 directed her and an all-star cast in an adaptation of Lawrence Durrell's Egyptian-set romance drama, Justine. "We became very good friends. Such a beautiful person and such a fantastic director." And quite a change from the improvisatory rigors of Godard, whose name Karina always returns to when talking about her career.
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"I'm very happy for Belmondo," she says of her Pierrot le Fou co-star, recently honored by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. "In the past, he never talked about Breathless and how it made him a star. He's talking about it now, and what he did with Jean-Luc. It's always important to talk about what Jean-Luc did — for him, for me, for everyone."
Pierrot le Fou (1965), directed by Jean-Luc Godard and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina, screens on Friday, April 23, as part of the City of Lights, City of Angels French-film festival, which runs April 19-25. More info at colcoa.org.
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