Very late I got into
Godard's work and life with Anna Karina, watching all their seven works
together with her as the protagonist and absolute axis plus Mépris,
which certainly includes Anna but impersonated, ironically, by Brigitte Bardot
(the disposable airhead blonde; quite the anti-Anna). A fair amount of people
seem to acknowledge that most women, actresses or not, look nothing like Anna
and one can see that difference even during some interviews, when she was out
of character or, rather, playing herself. Makeup-assisted or not, Anna on
screen was really something else entirely: an event, a singularity of
substance, like Roland Barthes once called Audrey Hepburn (and rightly so)
when comparing her bewildering unique beauty with the aseptic generic one of
Greta Garbo. Anna started her transmutations, as Veronica (Le petit soldat), being the subject of a bet: 50 bucks, said the tough guy who was about to meet
her, so he wouldn't fall for her after five minutes or less; he met Veronica
and, at the sight of her waving hair, he lost the bet. Then they'd discuss
modern painters, love, suicide and ideals (or the lack them of), though she was
merely telling him what he wanted to hear. Anna in Godard's films
wasn't a woman as much as some improved feminine being: an automaton, a
breathing (nay, smoking) doll to try styles on and play along with, only to
discover that it was us who were toyed with from the beginning; a very well
calibrated instrument, like a Stradivarius, that man's best ideals, fears and
desires could resonate with before falling apart. As Nana (Vivre
sa vie), she was the feminine ear that can listen to philosophy; as
Natascha (Alphaville), she was the feminine mouth that can speak
philosophy; but in no case she ever stops being feminine and beautiful: she can
assimilate the knowledge and hopes of men without them reducing or neutralizing
her. As Marianne (Pierrot le fou), alternating hippie and guerrilla phases, between love and other forms of madness, she tells aloud poetry of Rimbaud plus her own naive alexandrine, only to betray everything in the end. In any and every character, Anna is no militant, no scholar, hardly a prostitute or a spy; her feminine being is
incommensurable, unreachable and always unforgettable. She always remains
either the riddle or the Sphinx ("Une joli Sphinx") and her
mystery is indeed the very riddle of the Sphinx: what is she, that has all the
riddles? Those who know, like Peer Gynt, know that the positive answer to the
riddle is that the Sphinx is 'herself'; but those who know even better, know that
the ultimate meta-answer is that the Sphinx does not exist... and that is the
solution to Anna's riddle as well.
When prompted to, Anna always described her
relationship with Godard as a little weird but moving love story. Godard, always
cerebral, was far less flattering. During a famous interview together, 20 years
after their break up, Godard said right in Anna's face that movies were all he
could offer and it wasn't enough to keep her around; that he wanted Anna as a
sort of base model to create certain films with and that worked great, but her
characters always repeated badly in actual life; at that moment, the also aged
Anna stood up and left the place, unable to hold her tears. In L'Ève Future, Villiers De
L'Isle-Adam said that being born a beautiful woman is like being born a tiger
or a hunchback: mere accidents, freak products of the chaos that the fools keep
calling 'nature'; but Anna's raw beauty was more like a full break of physics: a singularity
indeed, a form of beauty that started and finished within her with no rate of
reproducibility at all; and a beast may look good but it is the taxiderming or preserving somehow what gives it nobility, by turning
it into a specimen: by putting the accidental into a greater use than merely
existing, mindlessly living and passing away.
Anna the
Sphinx is not herself but the nonexistent: Anna the cinema goddess was an illusion created by Godard with full awareness of the trick, as a project meant
to end, sooner or later, when the actual Anna would grow older and apart from him
and his subjects. While it lasted, however, it was a feast for the eyes, mind
and heart. As Odile (Bande à Part), she was the dumbest girl in probably
the dumbest film ever made; but just like Snow White (in probably the dumbest tale ever written), her unearthly beauty is the only thing that gives
sense to it all. As Angela (Une femme est un femme), she was just the universal egotistic, voluble but helplessly
adorable girl, later ubiquitous among japanese idols and amime; a quasi 2D-promoted beauty by the means of cinema, which, in
the end, is also just montage in action, animation as well. Anna's everlasting charm is such
an extreme fabrication delivered by the hands of Godard, that her cinematic
persona can't be called a work of her own; her later jobs as an actress never reached the cinematographic heights obtained by Godard. Anna's hyperfemininity was no product nor vindication of women's agenda but
of man's, just like Godard very clearly made her say as Angela, with her crying
voice of beautiful Sphinx:
"Nothing's more beautiful than a woman in tears.
We should boycott women who don't cry.
Modern women are stupid. These modern women who try to imitate men."
We should boycott women who don't cry.
Modern women are stupid. These modern women who try to imitate men."
Allegedly emancipated women
celebrating Anna, the specimen, is ludicrous. Men falling for Anna is just as
always: not for the woman but for the andréide, the doll… which was
lovely indeed.
