New Wave spontaneity merged with downbeat slice-of-life as Godard took inspiration from real-life magistrate Marcel Sacotte’s nonfiction book detailing prostitution. The resulting dozen vignettes—lensed in sequence by Godard and cinematographer Raoul Coutard—incrementally chart the circumstances by which young wife and mother Nana (entrancingly portrayed by Godard’s then-wife Anna Karina) comes to sell herself.

In French with English subtitles