Die Verachtung

French New Wave Director Jean-Luc Godard's apparent intent here is to portray film-making as a grubby, degrading commercial enterprise that taints everything it touches. Given this contemptuous premise, film producers are pimps; film directors are prostitutes. Thus, film-making is essentially artistic prostitution.

That's the major theme among a maze of interlocking themes, most of which are so subtle that trying to figure them out requires multiple viewings and/or college coursework.

The plot is undeniably slow. There are many single-shot sequences, and the entire film contains only about 150 shots. The result is that scenes are very lengthy. Further, the story is amazing in its almost total absence of melodrama. The result of slow pace and lack of melodrama, for many viewers, is abject boredom.

But I think that effect was intentional. My impression is that Godard expects viewers to work, to be part of the film process. In one scene Fritz Lang, the director character, says "One must suffer", in the context of film-making, of which the viewer is included.

"Contempt" has only five main characters. Prokosch (Jack Palance) is the archetype Hollywood producer: crass, stupid, money hungry, uninterested in culture or poetry. He's domineering and dictatorial. In one scene, he mutters: "When I hear the word culture, I grab my checkbook". Fritz Lang, as the film's moral center, counters by saying that in Nazi Germany, the word "checkbook" equated to "revolver", a veiled reference to an edict of Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda czar under Hitler. Equating a Hollywood film producer (Prokosch) to Goebbels is about as contemptuous as one can be toward Hollywood.

But the plot in "Contempt" also features a writer named Paul (Michel Piccoli) and his pouty, sultry, rarely smiling wife, Camille (Brigitte Bardot). Prokosch wants Paul to write the script for "The Odyssey", the film within "Contempt". "The Odyssey" is supposed to be a story about ancient Greek gods. And the main characters in "Contempt" mirror to some extent the characters in "The Odyssey".

The plot of "Contempt" is segmented into three main parts. The first and third parts focus explicitly on film production, relative to "The Odyssey". The middle section focuses on the discordant relationship between Paul and Camille. Here, most of the plot takes place inside their apartment. The critique of film-making continues, but in a more subtle form, via "mis en scene" staging and framing. And it's presented almost in real time, the effect of which is to amplify boredom for viewers.

"Contempt" is shot in color and in French Cinema-Scope. I did not care for the widescreen projection. Godard uses lots of point-of-view shots. And the entire film is saturated with tracking shots. The use of camera filters symbolizes technical devices that "filter" reality, the implication being that films can never be like real life. Red, white, and blue are the film's main colors, a cinematographic reference to American film-making. Outdoor scenes, especially on the Mediterranean, are beautiful. Georges Delerue's haunting score sets the tone for the whole film, and can be described as tragic, mournful, and majestic, in keeping with epic Greek tragedy.

Acting is acceptable, if unremarkable. Jack Palance, however, is not terribly convincing as a corporate suit. The film's budget was roughly 5 million-franc. And interestingly, almost half of that went to pay the salary of actress Brigitte Bardot, whose presence in this film reeks of personal vanity.

Clearly lacking in entertainment value, the story in "Contempt" will be a pain for many viewers, as it was for me. However, the beautiful score and the gorgeous scenery at Capri help offset the film's script. Taken as a whole this film is important, historically. And what I most admire is that its thematic contempt for Hollywood film-making was courageous in 1963. Unfortunately, that theme is still valid, 46 years later.

In 1963 Jean-Luc Godard directs this dramatic movie, which is one of the his most "mainstream" works.

At this time Godard is still able to tell stories, without loosing himself in intellectual games and political messages -the films he makes from 1966 are more and more hermetic. From 1968-69 they're incomprehensibles...

In "Contempt" a screenwriter is going to realize with Fritz Lang an adaptation of "Ulysses". There are tensions with the American producer, on the other hand there are tensions with his wife -who feels alone and treated more like an object by him. She despises him for that and for his being so coward. She thinks to find a revenge in flirting with the producer...

This films talks about coldness in human relationships and failures in communications. Colours, Italian atmospheres and Mediterranean locations increase this world of silence and frustration.

We can remember "Contempt" for many reasons: first the presence of a young Michel Piccoli and of a wonderful Brigitte Bardot (although she was delicious in every movie she made, here she's special -more sad, frailer ... a real actress). We can't help to appreciate, by the way, her body... this wonderful naked body (we're only in '63!!!). We can also remember the presence of a giant like Fritz Lang, who acts himself. And we can't forget this is a film about movie's world, a film which talks about films... That shows love Godard has for this art.

Fritz Lang, playing himself, is set to direct a more commercial adaptation of Homer's "Odyssey". Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance), the producer, despises art films and hires screenwriter Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli) to help Lang commercialize the movie. Javal 'offers' his young wife, Camille (Brigitte Bardot, sexier than ever, in one of her few serious roles), to Prokosch, thinking he'll get a better payment. But he didn't know that would sparkle Camille's contempt and ruin their marriage.

"Le Mépris" aka "Contempt" is Godard's existentialist, provocative essay of the relationships between artistic and commercial cinema, man and woman/husband and wife (he was married to his then-muse Anna Karina, with whom he made some of his best films; after their divorce in 1967, he married Anne Wiazemsky, with whom he made "La Chinoise", "Week End" and others). Gorgeously photographed by Raoul Coutard and scored by the master Georges Delerue, and with some "influences" of Antonioni's trilogy (L'Avventura, La Notte and L'Eclisse), "Le Mépris" is not my favourite Godard, but it's certainly a vigorous film. 9/10.

Paul (Picoli) is hired by vulgarian US producer Jerry Prokosh (Palance) to rewrite a screenplay for his adaptation, which Fritz Lang (himself) insists on shooting in a hyper-stylized, mythological fashion. Paul's relationship with his trophy wife Camille disintegrates as she feels abandoned by him to Prokosh's advances, and sees him subdue himself to these great men.

It is about film-making - of course! - it is about the plight of the artist, but where it succeeds most is in the carefully examined slow destruction of Camille and Paul's marriage. Raoul Coutard's cinemascope photography, filled with lush colors, only serves to highlight how little Paul is and how out of his depth he is. He and his wife hide it in different manners: Paul by trying to assert intellectual superiority over his wiser-than-she-appears wife, therefor earning her contempt. She hides by relying on her sensuality.

Godard typically references his love for film in a way that many will find pedantic, and the lush score isn't always wisely used, overwhelming and sometimes even obtrusive. But thankfully, Godard's message and cast survive the director's pseudo-intellectual short-comings. Bardot is perfectly cast as the ignorant innocent who strives to appear and be smarter than she is (even sporting a brunette whig at some point, in what is really a sad moment of self-loathing), but fails. Camille never convinces when she speaks, but the pain in those eyes is intensely real. Picoli's Paul is easier to sympathize with, as the "reasonable" whose every move to please anyone dooms him further. It is a cruel lesson and warning about relationships.

The film also serves a more sarcastic and amusing (and far more conscious) duel between Palance's Prokosh, superbly vulgar and dramatic, and Lang, who becomes a wise and immensely charismatic figure that stands against compromise. It is sad that this was the German master's only performance in front of the camera.

Le Mépris is slow, and if you get caught too much in Goddard's referencing and hyper-stylization, it will bore you. But if you really follow these characters, you're in for a unique, edifying and sometimes unnervingly uncomfortable ride.

Must be seen several times under different angles to be fully appreciated.

It all starts, with so much elegance and grace, with such smooth outlines, that your eyes caress and trace, Paul Javal and bride Camille, she seeks assertion, he makes her feel, that he won't allow a soul to take his place. But the ties that bind are easy to let go, and Camille is feeling Paul isn't so true, like a plate than can be shared, causes contempt and despair, and attraction comes unstuck like perished glue.

An often tricky piece of cinema that hardly entertains but leaves a mark that you may or may not be able to reconcile. Brigitte Bardot is as elegant as ever, in a film about a film that leaves you pondering how on earth could Paul Jarval let her go and wondering how many times you need to re-watch it to gather the intent.