Anna Karina obit

Actress Anna Karina Has Died 

She was not on the list.

Karina was a Danish-French film actress, director, writer, model, and singer. She was French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard's collaborator in the 1960s, performing in several of his films, including The Little Soldier, A Woman Is a Woman, My Life to Live, Bande à part (Band of Outsiders), Pierrot le Fou (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 Vivre ensemble (1973), her directorial debut, 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."

Hanne Karin Blarke Bayer was born on 22 September 1940 in Frederiksberg, Denmark. Her mother was a dress shop owner and her father was a ship captain who left the family a year after she was born.

She lived with her maternal grandparents for four years, then spent the next four years in foster care before returning to live with her mother and her abusive step-father when she was eight. As a child, her mother told her that she was ugly, and that her eyes and forehead were too big. She has described her childhood as "terribly wanting to be loved", as she felt unwanted and unloved. She made numerous attempts to run away from home, trying to find boats that would take her to Sweden or America. She dreamt of becoming an actor from a young age and wanted to attend drama school but at the time the age requirement for Danish drama schools was 21.

As a student, she rarely attended school and when she achieved good grades in her certificate exams, her school refused to believe she had done so without cheating. The injustice made her leave school at the age of 14.

After leaving school, she went on to find work as a lift operator in a department store and as an assistant to an illustrator.

She began her professional career in Denmark, where she sang in cabarets and worked as a model playing in commercials. Aged 14, she was spotted in the street by Ib Schmedes, who cast her as the lead in his forty-minute short film Pigen og skoene (The Girl and The Shoes, 1959), which won a prize at Cannes. However, as things didn't seem to be going well at home, where in an evening her step-father beat her very badly, she decided to leave. With the equivalent of $15, which she'd received from her grandfather, she hitchhiked to Paris. She has said that although she grew up in Denmark, she was “fascinated” by France and after traveling to Paris at age 14, she wanted to go back and live there.

In the summer of 1958, aged 17, Karina arrived in Paris. With only 10,000 francs and unable to speak French, she struggled to find a place to stay and had to ask neighborhood priests for somewhere to sleep. Finally, a young priest found her a small room on the rue Pavée, just behind the Bastille. One day, while starving and wandering through Paris, she found herself in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. She sat down at Les Deux Magots café, where a woman called Catherine Harlé approached her and asked her if she would be willing to do some photos. Suspicious at first, Karina finally agreed when she found out it was a professional shoot for the French newspaper Jours de France. After finishing the shoot, Harlé, although telling Karina that she wasn't very talented, gave her some contacts.

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 has said that when she met Chanel on the set of the Elle photoshoot, Chanel told her: “I believe you want to be an actress… You need to learn French. What’s your name little girl?” “Hanne Karin Bayer.” Karina replied. And Chanel said: “No: Anna Karina – call yourself that.” It was deliberately coined to evoke Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina. She also appeared in commercials for products such as Coca-Cola, Pepsodent, and Palmolive. She was still underage but received enough money to find herself a place to stay. And as she still wanted to attend drama school, she sat in movie theaters and watched French movies to teach herself the language.

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 (Le Petit Soldat, 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.[7] In all, Karina appeared in eight films directed by Godard, including My Life to Live (Vivre sa vie, 1962), Band of Outsiders (Bande à part, 1964) Pierrot le Fou and Alphaville (both 1965). In Pierrot le Fou, 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 the production company for Living Together (Vivre ensemble, 1973), her directorial debut, 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 Ulli Lommel, her partner at the time. 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.

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 recorded the album Une histoire d'amour with Philippe Katerine, followed by a concert tour. In 2005, she released Chansons de films, a collection of songs sung in movies.

Karina wrote four novels: Vivre ensemble (1973), Golden City (1983), On n'achète pas le soleil (1988), and Jusqu'au bout du hasard (1998).

While working together on Le Petit Soldat, as the crew were having a dinner party in Lausanne, Godard wrote a note and gave it to Karina, saying: “I love you, come and meet me at midnight in a café called Café de la Prez.” At the time Karina was in a relationship but she had already fallen in love with Godard so she ended her relationship with her then-boyfriend and went to meet Godard. They began a relationship and married in 1961. Eventually, Karina served as a cinematic muse to Godard, appearing in eight of his films, including Alphaville, Bande à part, and Pierrot le Fou, during their five-year marriage and after. Karina liked being the muse, stating in 2016: "How could I not be honoured? 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." 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."

 

Filmography

Year     Title            Role            Director           Notes

1961    Tonight or Never            Valérie            Michel Deville 

A Woman Is a Woman            Angela Récamier            Jean-Luc Godard     

1962    Cléo from 5 to 7            The Fiancée            Agnès Varda            episode: "Les fiancés du pont Macdonald"

She'll Have to Go       Toni            Robert Asher  

Sun in Your Eyes     Dagmar            Jacques Bourdon          

My Life to Live            Nana Kleinfrankenheim         Jean-Luc Godard     

Three Fables of Love            Colombe        Hervé Bromberger            segment: "Le corbeau et le renard"

1963    The Little Soldier            Veronica Dreyer            Jean-Luc Godard     

Shéhérazade            Shéhérazade   Pierre Gaspard-Huit  

Sweet and Sour     La pauvre Ginette            Jacques Baratier           

1964    Band of Outsiders            Odile            Jean-Luc Godard     

Circle of Love            Rose / The Chambermaid            Roger Vadim 

All About Loving  Hélène            Jean Aurel   

1965    The Thief of Tibidabo            Maria            Maurice Ronet           

Alphaville            Natascha von Braun            Jean-Luc Godard     

The Camp Followers            Elenitza Karaboris            Valerio Zurlini  

Un mari à un prix fixe            Béatrice Reinhoff            Claude de Givray        

Pierrot le Fou            Marianne Renoir            Jean-Luc Godard     

1966    The Nun            Suzanne Simonin            Jacques Rivette 

Made in USA            Paula Nelson Jean-Luc Godard     

1967    Anna            Anna            Pierre Koralnik            TV movie

Zärtliche Haie            Elena / Costa   Michel Deville 

The Oldest Profession            Natasha / Eleanor Romeovich, Hostess 703            Jean-Luc Godard            segment: "Anticipation"

Lamiel  Lamiel            Jean Aurel   

The Stranger            Marie Cardona            Luchino Visconti           

1968    The Magus  Anne            Guy Green  

Before Winter Comes Maria            J. Lee Thompson       

1969    Man on Horseback            Elisabeth Kohlhaas            Volker Schlöndorff      

Laughter in the Dark    Margot            Tony Richardson      

Justine  Melissa            George Cukor and Joseph Strick   

Dämonische Leinwand                     Klaus Wyborny         

1970    The Time to Die            The Unnamed Woman            André Farwagi           

The Wedding Ring     Jeanne            Christian de Chalonge 

1971            Rendezvous at Bray            She (The Waitress)            André Delvaux           

Carlos  Clara            Hans W. Geißendörfer            TV movie

1972    The Salzburg Connection            Anna Bryant  Lee H. Katzin 

1973    Vivre ensemble            Julie Anderson            Anna Karina 

1974    Bread and Chocolate            Elena            Franco Brusati 

Morel's Invention            Faustine          Emidio Greco  

1976    The Musician Killer            Louise            Benoît Jacquot           

Scrambled Eggs     Clara Dutilleul            Joël Santoni

Chinese Roulette            Irene Cartis   Rainer Werner Fassbinder       

1978            Surprise Sock            Nathalie          Jean-François Davy 

Just like Home            Anna            Márta Mészáros        

Ausgerechnet Bananen            Natascha         Ulli Lommel           

1979    The Story of a Mother            Christine Olsen Claus Weeke

1980            Charlotte, Tell Your Mother that I Love Her            Stéphane         Aly Borgini

1983            Vincent's Friend            Eleonore          Pierre Granier-Deferre

1984    Ave Maria   Berthe Granjeux            Jacques Richard           

1985            Treasure Island            The Mother Raoul Ruiz     

1987    Last Song    Susan            Dennis Berry   

Last Summer in Tangiers            Myrrha, a cabaret singer            Alexandre Arcady      

Cayenne Palace  Lola            Alain Maline 

1988    The Abyss            Catherine         André Delvaux           

1990    The Man Who Wanted to Be Guilty   Edith            Ole Roos   

1995    Up, Down, Fragile            Sarah            Jacques Rivette 

1996    Chloé            Katia            Dennis Berry    TV movie

2002    The Truth About Charlie Karina            Jonathan Demme         

2003    I, Cesar   Gloria            Richard Berry   

2008    Victoria            Victoria            Anna Karina