Vivre Sa Vie

Jean-Luc Godard - 1962
It's, again, not much use giving my normal type of analysis; there is enough in each scene to write a book on, not that I would feel particularly able to go beyond speculation. It's a film, not a code, after all. But I'll say a few things.
If I, watching it here, had a chief subject, it was the identity. The soul, what you get if you take away the inside. What are we filming? Anna Karina, a 1962 prostitute, a film star. Godard fractures the identity through his Brechtian titles, some long takes, keeping the camera on when Karina fluffs a line, looks at the camera, before a shot starts.
How is she a cinema star? Through the association with Joan of Arc. Through her place as a model of Godard, made clear as the effective voiceover of the 'Oval Portrait' chapter, where sound is shown seperate from image. In the documentary voiceover parts, in the movements to song, we see her for what she (in part) is; someone in a film, someone Godard is filming, a film star. With all these identities in place, is she free? One vpice tells us she is; the words. Does the image agree? Cinema tells us she must follow a path; hence the Aldrich-esque conclusion, necessary for the binded film star.
Lets look at two techniques of these parts, these identities, never really seperate. We have the camera that, rather than going into SRS, swings back and forth; is this a reaction against the eyeline matches of Dreyer we have just seen? A metaphor for the shifting identities? A clear show of the manipulation of our positions?
By the by; Godard's horizontal pans, smooth, are really wonderful. With the sound design, it shows us we are in a location, not part of a film set... perhaps. It creates, by its ease, a whole location.
With these identities, what can a film show? When it turns to a newsreel documentary; do we believe the sound, or the image, which seems in a way to enact, but do we see more, or because it's not 'real', and we might traditionally say the words 'are real', less? Are the words lying without the image? But we know that the images are 'fiction'! This relates to the philosopher's discussion of language; we have to balance, to contemplate, perhaps in the words, the 'facts', and we have to live. What is Godard's cinema? Sort of both...
What does this, as documentary, tell us about? Paris, the social situation in '62? That's what it's a documentary about. About the nature of film? Godard wants to talk about that? About the 'human condition'; on the surface, not so much. Freedom ,identity, surely? But always refracted through the cinema, that is how these themes are presented. After all, it's a film.