|
|
Article: The mandatory proxy.(Jean-Luc Godard's 'Vivre sa Vie')
- Article from:
- Biography
- Article date:
- January 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 University of Hawaii Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
For responsibility is the extreme of subissement: it is that for which I must answer when I am without any answer and without any self save a borrowed, a simulated self, or the "stand-in" for identity: the mandatory proxy.
--Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster
On the surface, Jean-Luc Godard's fourth film, Vivre sa Vie (1962), does not appear to be an act of autobiographical expression. It stands in stark contrast to Francois Truffaut's classic Les Quartre Cents Coups (1959), for example, in which the lead character, Antoine, is famously modeled on Truffaut's own life. To the viewer ignorant of the real life context of Godard's film--in ...