Jean-Luc Godard cast his then wife Anna Karina as Nana, a shopgirl turned prostitute, in the third of their seven features together. Marking the high point of their collaboration – and their short-lived marriage – the film is a paean to the actress’s beauty, linking her to silent-era stars Louise Brooks (whose distinctive bobbed hair she shares here) and Maria Falconetti, whose performance in Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) is watched by a tearful Nana in one of the most striking sequences.
Shot in black and white by Raoul Coutard, the film features one of the great cinematographer’s most celebrated shots, showing Nana and a customer in the record store where she works, before the camera turns to look out of the window.
