And Godard created woman...with the help of Anna Karina, his then-wife, in this, his one truly sensitive portrait of a woman. Vivre sa Vie tells of Nana (Karina), a naive shopgirl, at the brief, flickering moment when she takes responsibility for her life. Leaving her husband and child, Nana takes to the streets, becoming a prostitute and a student of human emotions. Brechtian in its use of twelve tableaux, each introduced by headings describing what will follow, Vivre sa Vie is also intensely personal. And for all its words, it functions visually, as a many-sided portrait; made up like Louise Brooks, Nana/Karina is nevertheless laid bare by her own choice(s). In the scene in the cinema, her rapt attention to Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc is a profound tribute by the sound film to the "microphysiogomy" of the silents: we see through the face of Marie Falconetti's Joan to the soul of Nana.