December 15, 2019

"Whether playing a streetwalker or a terrorist, Ms. Karina managed to look flirtatious, with her dark hair, wispy bangs, heavy eyeliner..."

"... and chic wardrobe of sailor-uniform tops, knee socks, lots of plaid and perky headwear, from berets to boaters.... At 14, she dropped out of school, sang in cabarets and worked as a television model. At 17, she ran away from home — hitchhiking to Paris — and was discovered by the casting director of an advertising agency while sitting at Les Deux Magots, the fashionable Left Bank cafe. During a photo shoot for Elle magazine, she met the fashion designer Coco Chanel, who advised her to change her name. Godard, a film critic at the time, saw her in a movie theater ad for a Palmolive bath product. When he subsequently offered her a small part in his first full-length film... she objected to doing a nude scene. Godard said he didn’t understand — after all, he had just seen her onscreen in a bathtub, looking very comfortable and showing plenty of skin. 'I wasn’t nude,' she told him... 'That was your imagination.' She had been wearing a swimsuit in the tub, she said, and “the soapsuds were up to my neck.'... After her divorce from Godard ('He would say he was going out for cigarettes and come back three weeks later,' she told The Guardian), she married several other times... Ms. Karina was happy to acknowledge Godard as a Pygmalion figure, but also pointed out her own contributions... 'I gave him self-confidence.'"

From the NYT obituary for Anna Karina, whose  name, prior to that encounter with Coco Chanel, was Hanne Karin Bayer.



20 comments:

Shouting Thomas said...

Movies have always been about selling sex.

I've never known what to think about this female "I want to be a serious artist" shit. (It's as goofy as the typical rock musician pleading to be taken seriously.)

Your job as an actress (or actor) is to sell sex... your own.

Be a good whore. Stop whining over being a whore. Just do a good job of it.

tim in vermont said...

and was discovered by the casting director of an advertising agency while sitting at Les Deux Magots, *the fashionable Left Bank cafe.*

They seem to have misspelled “overpriced tourist trap.” Maybe this was true back then though.

Shouting Thomas said...

In anticipation of the feminist response to my first post:

Musicians (and I am one) have always acknowledged to one another that we are just cheap whores.

I try to be a good whore, too. It's my job.

Fernandinande said...

Les Deux Magots = The Two Barbary Apes. Sounds like a fun place.

But unless some Russian wrote a book about this Anna, I never heard of her.

William said...

I vaguely heard of her. She was certainly good looking, but she was no Bardot or even Jean Seberg, but that might be Godard's fault.

Craig Howard said...

I think it’s charming that a 17 year old girl — on her own in Paris in the sixties —was adamantly opposed to performing nude.

Josephbleau said...

Les Deux Magots was of course Morrison’s hangout. You can stop by before going to his grave in Pere Lachaise Cemetery. Sartre, Hemingway, Joyce, Camus, Picasso, all got drunk there. An obligatory stop on the path to become a time worn detached ex hippie.

bagoh20 said...

She was great at what she did at acting and that part of it called life. It is as S.T. simplifies it, and she was very good at it. It is not a bad thing at all. It's a central and very good thing, but the limits of it are a bit tragic, and that too is part of the art.

James K said...

adamantly opposed to performing nude.

Well, the "especially not for a small role" add-on calls to mind more the old Churchill line, "We've established what you are, we're just haggling over the price."

rcocean said...

I was never impressed with her or Godard. Go back to the 60's and its amazing how popular Godard was. Peeps like Simon or Kael would write 6-10 page review of his films they "Super important". Now, nobody cares. She's dead, but Godard is still alive, he's the same age as Eastwood, Connery, hackman, and Duvall. Who are all alive too. All these Hollywood stars are living forever. 90 is the new 70.

Saint Croix said...

A clip from Band of Outsiders. Tarantino named his production company after this flick. Way, way, way cool. Watch them dance the Madison.

People of Madison, you should learn to dance the Madison!

rcocean said...

"Dancing the Madison" is the good part of Band of Outsiders. The rest of the film sucks. After "Contempt" that was pretty much the same story for every Godard film. 10 minutes of good stuff, and rest boring crap or just mediocrity. He usually wrote the script as the film went along, and it shows.

rcocean said...

Every Godard film had someone talking politics or philosophizing for 15 minutes, in every film. Snobs loved that.

buwaya said...

Its amazing how modern some of these 1950's-1960s French movies seem. More modern than modern life! Of course its affected, and to a degree aspirational.
We have the DVD set of Demy.
Looking at "Les Demoiselles de Rochefort" - we have to go to Rochefort, and Biarritz, and... it's going to be a road trip when we get better weather probably.

SDaly said...

I often stumble upon things that make me realize how much of our cultural heritage was jettisoned in the 20th Century. Take Pierrot, for example. Until a few years ago I had never heard of the Commedia dell'arte, which is the source of the stock charachters in European theatre that reigned for hundreds of years. Those characters still exist today - Pierrot, Harlequin, (and later Clown) -- but as individual characters/costumes, not in the traditional ensemble. It is fascinating to read how those characters changed and adapted to the times.

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Etienne said...

She was never photographed without a non-filtered cigarette. I bet they were "Lucky Strikes" as probably a million migrants went to France at the same time, and she was the one that got selected.

Someone should build a wall.

readering said...

Not Gauloises?

Etienne said...

...maybe Gitanes (smoke your Gypsy woman)

madAsHell said...

Fuck.....I remember when I thought goofy foreign movies had some deep meaning. I was wrong.