HER LIFE TO LIVE: Anna Karina and the Women of the New Wave

A wildly glamorous, sharply feminist forgotten history of the actresses who changed the course of the movies, and the possibilities for 20th century women's lives

In the spring of 1958, as the world was busy remaking itself in the turbulent wake of WWII, a Danish teenager hitchhiked to Paris with no money or prospects, but a dream of acting. Within four years, she become the face of a movement that exploded the possibilities of film, and offered the world a revolutionary vision of liberated womanhood.
The traditional story of the French New Wave centers on a select group of male directors who elevated film from lowbrow entertainment to art, forever changing the way we make and watch movies. Directors Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut were cultural heroes of their time, their work in film compared to what Picasso did to painting. It was Godard who spotted that young Danish woman in a soap commercial, married her, and made her a star. At least, that's how Anna Karina has been remembered – as a creation of Godard's, an embodiment of his artistic genius.
In fact, it was the talent and daring of Karina, alongside Brigitte Bardot, Jean Seberg, Jean Moreau, and a dozen fellow actresses, that made the New Wave so revolutionary, its charm so modern, its influence so widespread and lasting. Taking advantage of this moment when cinema was being made over anew, they pushed against conventional femininity, asserting their agency with verve and nonchalance, reminding the audience that women had lives of their own. They became international icons, at once beloved, reviled, and abused for their insistent independence, and still they carried on working, several persevering to become directors themselves. Yet their part in this sea change has been brushed aside, their strength in the face of trenchant misogyny quickly forgotten.
Recovering the courageous work and lives of these New Wave sisters, Her Life to Live spirals outwards from the dramatic narrative of Anna Karina, the boldest of the set, to paint a vibrant portrait of this remarkable community of women and their revolutionary moment. As dramatic and sensitive as Mary Gabriel's Ninth Street Women, Tove Ditlevsen's The Copenhagen Trilogy, and Sarah Bakewell's At the Existentialist Café, it is a story of courage and talent, romance and violence, survival and creation – cinematic in its own right.

MADISON MAINWARING is a journalist and cultural critic based in Paris, writing for The New York Times, The Economist, The Atlantic, Harper's, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Paris Review Daily. She is a PhD candidate in French Studies at Yale, where she has received the highest honors available to junior scholars in the field. She won a 2022-23 MacDowell Fellowship to support her research for Her Life to Live.