Anna Karina

Anna Karina (born Hanne Karin Bayer, 22 September 194014 December 2019) was a Danish-French film avant garde actress, director, writer, and singer. She was French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard's muse in the 1960s, performing in several of his films, including "The Little Soldier", "A Woman Is a Woman", "My Life to Live", ' ("Band of Outsiders"), ' ("Crazy Pete") and "Alphaville". For her performance in "A Woman Is a Woman", Karina won the Silver Bear Award for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival.
In 1972, Karina set up a production company for her directorial debut, "Vivre ensemble" (1973), which screened in the Critics' Week lineup at the 26th Cannes Film Festival. She also directed the French-Canadian film "Victoria" (2008). In addition to her work in cinema, she worked as a singer, and wrote several novels.
Karina was an icon of 1960s cinema, and referred to as the "effervescent free spirit of the French New Wave, with all of the scars that the position entails". "The New York Times" described her as "one of the screen's great beauties and an enduring symbol of the French New Wave."
Early life.
Hanne Karin Bayer (later known as Anna Karina) was born in Frederiksberg, Denmark. Her mother was a dress shop owner and her father left the family a year after she was born.
She lived with her maternal grandparents for three years, then spent the next four years in foster care before returning to live with her mother. She has described her childhood as "terribly wanting to be loved", and as a child she made numerous attempts to run away from home. Her mother remarried, but her step-father was abusive.
She began her career in Denmark, where she sang in cabarets and worked as a model playing in commercials. At age 14, she appeared in a Danish short film by Ib Schmedes, which won a prize at Cannes. In 1958, after a row with her mother, she hitchhiked to Paris.
Career.
Modeling.
Bayer was 17 when she arrived in Paris, with only 10,000 francs and unable to speak French. One day while sitting at the café Les Deux Magots she was approached by a woman from an advertisement agency who asked her to do some photos. She began to work as a model and eventually became successful, posing for several magazines, including "Elle", and meeting Pierre Cardin and Coco Chanel. Karina said that Chanel helped her devise her professional name, Anna Karina, which was deliberately coined to evoke the Leo Tolstoy novel, "Anna Karenina". She appeared on the front cover of the "Elle" fashion magazine and in commercials for products such as Coca-Cola, Pepsodent, and Palmolive soap.
Film.
Jean-Luc Godard, then a film critic for "Cahiers du cinéma", first saw Karina in the Palmolive adverts in which she posed in bathtubs, during movie previews in a Monsavon pub. He was casting his debut feature film, "Breathless" ("À bout de souffle", 1960), and offered her a small part in it, but she refused when he mentioned that there would be a nude scene. When Godard questioned her refusal, mentioning her apparent nudity in the Palmolive ads, she is said to have replied, "Are you mad? I was wearing a bathing suit in those ads—the soapsuds went up to my neck. It was in your mind that I was undressed." In the end, the character Godard reserved for Karina did not appear in the film. Godard offered her a role in "The Little Soldier" ("", not released until 1963) which concerns contentious French actions during the Algerian War. She played a pro-Algerian activist. Karina, then still under 21, had to persuade her estranged mother to sign the contract for her. The film was immediately controversial, outlawed from French theaters for its content referencing the Algerian War.
As Angela in "A Woman Is a Woman" ("Une femme est une femme", 1961). Karina's role was as an unattached striptease dancer who nevertheless wishes to have a child and daydreams about appearing in MGM musicals. Her school-girl costume emulated Leslie Caron in "Gigi" (1958), worn even while performing her act. Karina won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 11th Berlin International Film Festival for her performance. In all, Karina appeared in eight films directed by Godard, including "My Life to Live" (', 1962), "Band of Outsiders" (', 1964) ' and "Alphaville" (both 1965). In ', Karina's character is on the run with her ex-boyfriend, while in "Alphaville", a science-fiction film often equated to "Bladerunner", Karina's role requires her to have difficulty saying the phrase "I love you." The last film in the sequence was "Made in USA" (1966). Anne Billson, in an article querying the concept of the female muse, wrote that Godard in his films with Karina "seems to have trouble conceiving that the female experience revolves around anything other than prostitution, duplicity, or wanting babies." Karina herself did not object to being described as Godard's muse: "Maybe it’s too much, it sounds so pompous. But of course I’m always very touched to hear people say that. Because Jean-Luc gave me a gift to play all of those parts."
Her career flourished, with Karina appearing in dozens of films through the 1960s, including "The Nun" ("La Religieuse", 1966), directed by Jacques Rivette, Luchino Visconti's "The Stranger" ("Lo straniero", 1967), the George Cukor/Joseph Strick collaboration "Justine" (1969), and Tony Richardson's "Laughter in the Dark" (1969). She continued to work steadily into the 1970s, with roles in Christian de Chalonge's "The Wedding Ring" ("L'Alliance", 1971), Andre Delvaux's "Rendezvous at Bray" ("Rendez-vous à Bray", also 1971), "The Salzburg Connection" (1972), and Franco Brusati's "Bread and Chocolate" ("Pane e cioccolata", 1973).
In 1972, she set up a production company, Raska, for her directorial debut, "Living Together" ("Vivre ensemble", 1973), in which she also acted. The film screened in the Critics’ Week lineup at the 26th Cannes Film Festival.
She starred in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "Chinese Roulette" ("Chinesisches Roulette", 1976); Fassbinder allegedly wrote the film for her and her partner at the time, Ulli Lommel. She later wrote and acted in "Last Song" (1987) and appeared in "Up, Down, Fragile" ("Haut bas fragile", 1995), directed by Jacques Rivette, and sang in "The Truth About Charlie" (2002), a remake of the film "Charade" (1963).
Karina wrote, directed and starred in "Victoria" (2008), a musical road movie filmed in Montreal and Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec. The lead character, played by Karina, has amnesia. Richard Kuipers praised it in "Variety" as "a pleasant gambol through the backwoods of Quebec."
Music and writing.
Karina maintained a singing career. At the end of the 1960s, she scored a major hit with "Sous le soleil exactement" and "Roller Girl" by Serge Gainsbourg. Both songs are from the TV musical comedy "Anna" (1967), by the film director Pierre Koralnik, in which she sings seven songs alongside Gainsbourg and Jean-Claude Brialy. Karina subsequently recorded an album, "", with Philippe Katerine, which was followed by a concert tour. In 2005, she released "Chansons de films", a collection of songs sung in movies.
Karina wrote four novels: ' (1973), "Golden City" (1983), ' (1988), and "Jusqu'au bout du hasard" (1998).
Personal life.
While working together on ', Karina and Godard began a relationship and married in 1961. Eventually, Karina served as a cinematic muse to Godard, appearing in eight of his films, including ', and "", during their five year marriage and after. Karina liked being the muse. "How could I not be honoured?" she told Xan Brooks of "The Guardian" in 2016. "Maybe it’s too much, it sounds so pompous. But of course I’m always very touched to hear people say that. Because Jean-Luc gave me a gift to play all of those parts. It was like "Pygmalion", you know? I was Eliza Doolittle and he was the teacher." At this, she briefly channels Henry Higgins. "By Jove," she says. "I think she’s got it."
The couple became, according to "The Independent", "one of the most celebrated pairings of the 1960s." A writer for "Filmmaker" magazine called their work "arguably the most influential body of work in the history of cinema."
Despite the critical success, their relationship behind the scenes was described as tumultuous; they fought on film sets, Karina fell ill several times, and Godard was often absent without explanation. One Godard film from this period which does not feature Karina, "Contempt" (1963), is said to be based on their difficult relationship. The couple divorced in 1965.
Karina said in spring 2016 that she and Godard no longer spoke to each other. She described the relationship in an interview with "W" magazine:It was all very exciting from the beginning. Of course we have a great love story and all that, but we were so different. He was 10 years older than me. He was very strange. He would go away and come back three weeks later ... It was difficult, and I was a young girl, not even 21—at the time Godard was 30. I know he didn't mean to hurt me, but he did. He was never there, he was never coming back, and I never knew where he was. He drove me a bit crazy.After divorcing Godard, Karina remarried three times; she was married to French actors Pierre Fabre from 1968 to 1974 and Daniel Duval from 1978 to 1981, and to American film director Dennis Berry from 1982 until her death.
Karina died at the age of 79 on Saturday, December 14, 2019, at a hospital in Paris. According to her agent, Laurent Balandras, the cause of death was cancer. However, her husband, Dennis Berry, said that the cause was not cancer, but a complication following a muscular rupture.
Legacy.
Karina is regularly considered an icon of 1960s cinema, a staple in French New Wave cinema, as well as a style icon. "The Guardian" described her as an "effervescent free spirit of the French new wave." "The New York Times" described her style as looking like a schoolgirl in her acting roles, regardless whether she was playing a streetwalker or a terrorist. Her signature look was her dark hair, wispy bangs, heavy eyeliner and school uniform of primary-coloured sailor-uniform tops, knee socks, plaid headwear such as berets and boaters. Refinery29 wrote that "her 60s French girl style – think sailor dresses, tartan, long socks, and hats – and mesmerizing doe-eyed beauty mean she continues to be referenced today by the super-stylish."