Main Cast: Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Fritz Lang, Giorgia Moll
Release Year: 1963
Country: FR/IT
Run Time: 102 minutes
Plot
Contempt is the story of the end of a marriage. Camille (Brigitte Bardot) falls out of love with her husband Paul (Michel Piccoli) while he is rewriting the screenplay Odyssey by American producer Jeremiah Prokosch (Jack Palance). Just as the director of Prokosch's film, Fritz Lang, says that The Odyssey is the story of individuals confronting their situations in a real world, Le Mépris itself is an examination of the position of the filmmaker in the commercial cinema. Godard himself was facing this situation in the production of Le Mépris. Italian producer Carlo Ponti had given him the biggest budget of his career, and he found himself working with a star of Bardot's magnitude for the first time. ~ Louis Schwartz, All Movie Guide
Review
While not Jean Luc Godard's best movie, Le Mepris (Contempt) offers one of his most fascinating moviegoing experiences. Like many of Godard's films, this one is about many things at once. It is a relationship drama, a modern-day retelling of Homer's The Odyssey, and it is also about art and the conflict between commercialization and artistic expression. And, most famously, it is also a big in-joke. The title is undoubtedly a stab at the producers of the film, Carlo Ponti and Joseph E. Levine. It was Godard's first foray into big-budget filmmaking and his first use of a star of the magnitude of Brigitte Bardot. The producers, worried about making their money back, began to request that the director make changes in the movie. Of course, someone as independent and radical as Godard did not take kindly to this. So, when Ponti asked him why he did not have a nude scene exploiting the popularity of Bardot, Godard gave him a nude scene (the one that opens the movie). Of course, he undermines it by making Bardot question whether her husband (Michel Piccoli) likes her different body parts. This change not only makes the scene more about insecurity than sexuality but also interrogates the idea of what makes a nude scene and why somebody would be drawn to it. Godard also has his stand-in, Fritz Lang, respond to the fact that he had to shoot the film in CinemaScope (which looks fantastic) by saying, "CinemaScope is fine for snakes and coffins, but not for people." It's no surprise that the producer in the film, Jack Palance in a hilariously obscene role, reads quick philosophical snippets from a tiny book of quotations. Following his experience on Le Mepris, Godard went into perhaps his greatest period as a director, always on his own terms. ~ Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide
Janine Autre - Costume Designer, Charles Bitsch - First Assistant Director, Jean-Luc Godard - Director, Agnès Guillemot - Editor, Lila Lakshmanan - Editor, Georges Delerue - Composer (Music Score), Raoul Coutard - Cinematographer, Philippe Dussart - Production Manager, Carlo Lastricati - Production Manager, Joseph E. Levine - Producer, Carlo Ponti - Producer, Georges de Beauregard - Producer, William Robert Sivel - Sound/Sound Designer, Jean-Luc Godard - Screenwriter, Alberto Moravia - Book Author
Americanfilm producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) hires respected Austrian director Fritz Lang (playing himself) to direct a film adaptation of Homer'sOdyssey. Dissatisfied with Lang's treatment of the material as an art film, Prokosch hires Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli), a novelist and playwright, to rework the script. The conflict between artistic expression and commercial opportunity parallels Paul's sudden estrangement from his wife Camille Javal (Brigitte Bardot), who becomes aloof with Paul after being left alone with Prokosch, a millionaire playboy.
While founded on Moravia's story of the progressive estrangement between a husband and wife, Godard's version also contains deliberate parallels with aspects of his own life: while Paul, Camille, and Prokosch correspond to Odysseus, Penelope, and Poseidon, respectively, they also correspond in some ways with Godard, his wife Anna Karina (his choice of female lead), and Joseph E. Levine, the film's distributor. At one point, Bardot dons a black wig which gives her a resemblance to Karina. Michel Piccoli also bears some resemblance to Brigitte Bardot's ex-husband and svengali, the filmmaker Roger Vadim.
Also notable in the film is a discussion of Dante — particularly Canto XVI of Inferno, about Ulysses' last fatal voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules to the other side of the world — and Friedrich Hölderlin's poem, "Dichterberuf" ("The Poet's Vocation").
Production
Italian film producer Carlo Ponti approached Jean Luc Godard to discuss a possible collaboration; Godard suggested an adaptation of Moravia's novel Il disprezzo (originally translated into English with the title A Ghost at Noon) in which he saw Kim Novak and Frank Sinatra as the leads; they refused. Ponti suggested Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, whom Godard refused. Finally, Bardot was chosen, because of the producer's insistence that the profits might be increased by displaying her famously sensual body. This provided the film's opening scene, filmed by Godard as a typical mockery of the cinema business with tame nudity. The scene was shot after Godard considered the film finished, at the insistence of the American co-producers. In the film, Godard cast himself as Lang's assistant director, and characteristically has Lang expound many of Godard's New Wave theories and opinions.
Contempt was filmed in and occurs entirely in Italy, with location shooting at the Cinecittà studios in Rome and the Casa Malaparte on Capri island. In a notable sequence, the characters played by Piccoli and Bardot wander through their apartment alternately arguing and reconciling. Godard filmed the scene as an extended series of tracking shots, in natural light and in near real-time.
Releases
The French, Italian and American theatrical releases differed significantly. The French release was multilingual (French, English, Italian and German), while the American and Italian releases were entirely dubbed into English and Italian, respectively. The French and American releases differ only slightly in editing, but the Italian version is significantly shorter (only 82 minutes) and, instead of George Delerue's original, haunting musical score, features a very different light jazz score written by Piero Piccioni.
Most DVD releases of the film now use the multilingual French release.
Reception
One of the most notable blurbs about the film: "Sight & Sound critic Colin MacCabe called Contempt "the greatest work of art produced in postwar Europe."[1]
