Maria Falconetti is like some kind of wonderful, heartbreaking spirit from another world. If IMDB is to be trusted, she makes something like three movies in her entire movie career, then has her greatest performance in THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC. She seems to actually *become* Joan of Arc in that film (or at least channels the spirit of that great saint), and then disappears from the screen forever. Everything about that film is tinged with a strange supernatural aura for me.

VIVRE SA VIE, of course, is much more earthbound, but Anna Karina is a goddess. I agree with you Claude: Bardot is fun in a sexy sex kitten kinda way, but Karina is on another level entirely. She has mystery.

Prehistoric Woman, I’m glad you brought up the Louise Brooks style of Nana’s hair. This is just another one of Godard’s references to the cinema, probably a shout-out to Brooks’s character in PANDORA’S BOX.

Your writing captures the emotion that is, at once, both spoken and unspoken in this most elliptical film of Godard’s. We are somehow allowed to know everything yet nothing of ‘Nana.’ A woman leads her tragic life before our eyes, trapped in the the machinery of the sex trade, yet her ‘true’ inner pain is somehow only hinted at, only glimpsed in fleeting moments.