Abstract

This study focuses on two French New Wave films starring Anna Karina, Jacques Rivette’s La Religieuse (The Nun) of 1966 and Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa vie (My Life to Live) of 1962. Both explore the dilemma of entrapment in an institution, a nunnery and a prostitution ring, respectively. Rivette’s film, set in the eighteenth century, is based on Denis Diderot’s memoir-novel of 1796. It depicts in a dramatic arc the travails of Suzanne, an illegitimate child owing to her mother’s secret liaison, whose family compels her to become a nun. Godard’s movie, set in the 1960s, presents in a Brechtian mode the torments of a Parisian prostitute, whose pimp fatally thwarts her desire to exit the profession. The unique cinematic style of each director explores the toilsome existence and tragic death of a young woman whose quest for individual freedom is devastated by patriarchal forces in two separate eras.