Every Man for Himself (1980 film)

Sauve qui peut (la vie) Every Man for Himself Slow Motion
French poster
Directed by	Jean-Luc Godard
Written by	Jean-Claude Carrière Jean-Luc Godard Anne-Marie Miéville
Produced by	Jean-Luc Godard Alain Sarde
Starring	Jacques Dutronc Isabelle Huppert Nathalie Baye
Cinematography	Renato Berta William Lubtchansky Jean-Bernard Menoud
Edited by	Jean-Luc Godard Anne-Marie Miéville
Music by	Gabriel Yared
Production company	Zoetrope Studios[1]
Distributed by	MK2 Diffusion
Release dates	8 September 1980 (1980-09-08) (Toronto) 15 October 1980 (1980-10-15) (France)
Running time	87 minutes
Countries	France Austria West Germany Switzerland
Language	French

Every Man for Himself (French: Sauve qui peut (la vie)) is a 1980 drama film directed, co-written and co-produced by Jean-Luc Godard that is set in and was filmed in Switzerland. It stars Jacques Dutronc, Isabelle Huppert, and Nathalie Baye, with a score by Gabriel Yared. Nathalie Baye won the César Award for Best Supporting Actress. It also was submitted as the Swiss entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 53rd Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.

Constructed as a musical piece, it has a prologue followed by three movements, each of which focuses on one of the three key characters and their interactions with the others, and ends with a coda. Throughout the film an unnamed piece of music recurs, which is the aria Suicidio! (Suicide!) from the opera La Gioconda by Ponchielli.^[2] Serving as leitmotiv for the whole story, it underscores the innate death-wish haunting the central character.^[3]