Contempt (1964)

Really Surprised!

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

It is quite strange to see Jean-Luc Godard making a movie about the deconstruction of a couple, but "Le Mépris" is with no doubt his best film and one of the best ever made. A screenwriter called Paul Javal receives a proposal to make new scenes for the cinematic adaptation of the book The Odyssey, however, his wife Camille begins to despise the little things he does, then the couple start to breakup. In addition to being visually beautiful and having one of the best movie soundtracks, the performances do not fall short, especially Brigitte Bardot, the film has a cameo from legendary director Fritz Lang (Metropolis and M), was also the first big budget film by Jean-Luc Godard, but that is little noticed in the film. The film creates an analogy between the story of the protagonist of the book The Odyssey with Camille and Paul are going through, the beauty of the images, well, almost everything works on this masterpiece. Cinema should be like life, and "Le Mépris" or Contempt is a tragic but visually beautiful depiction of it.

Definitively I go on affirming that I don't understand why Godard is reckoned by critics in general one of the greatest movie directors ever and particularly this movie as one of the best ever made. This film is the usual old story with supposedly deep and almost meaningless dialogues and hollow meaningless scenes almost totally unprovided with the dramatic vibration which should be suited to the story that is (or seems to be) behind. Everything is around a film that is being made based on Homer's Odyssey without a clear explanation about what it has to do with the rest I mean the real life of the characters, their tendencies and conflicts. The dialogue scenes between husband and wife (Piccoli and Bardot) are particularly long, dull and psychologically confusing. And as usual in Godard's movies it ends abruptly without any significative outcome despite the tragic happening at the end. In this movie things happen one after another, characters go on talking here and there and that's all. But as I have said many times before concerning Godard's movies,the fault must be mine.

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, Contempt is a 'new wave' French film full of 'French emotions' and rather a lot of unhappy and/or weird people. It stars Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli as Camille and Paul Javal, a young couple ravaged by marital and emotional difficulties and in the case of Camille either low self esteem or mental illness and an anger management problem. Paul (a screen writer) has his demons too and it's hard to figure out if he's a nice guy with a crazy wife or a sly and manipulative guy who has driven his wife crazy - and that's the crux of this movie. Contempt. The contempt that Camille feels for her spouse, the contempt her spouse feels for the crass American film Producer, Jeremy Prochosh (played by Jack Palance) who wants to commercialize Fritz Lang's Ulysses. The difficulty with this movie is that it's unclear whether the problems Camille and Paul had in their relationship existed prior to Paul's involvement with Prochosh and co. However, Camille's insecurities are showcased in the opening scene. What 'Contempt' does best is realism, and one of the most striking scenes involves Camille and Paul arguing (for what seems like hours) as they go about their business in their apartment; walking past each other, getting dressed, preparing dinner etc. The ending is unexpected but then again perhaps not if one takes Paul's interpretation of the Odyssey to heart? 'Contempt' certainly lives up to its title and is well acted, entertaining (in a voyeuristic way), and makes you uncomfortable because the acting is so 'real'.

When I first got to college, I was already into cinema and elected an intro to film course. I was only watching modern movies at that point, mostly American, and I was unsatisfied with most of the films we were watching for the class (most of them I've come around to liking since, though they all have a bit of a stigma of being attached to that class). The one big exception was Godard's Breathless, which kind of blew me away. It just felt fresh, where so many of those other films felt dated to me. Outside of the class, when exploring a video store's foreign section, a friend and I picked up Contempt - I wanted to see more Godard and he wanted to see more Brigitte Bardot (I have no idea how he already knew about her). He got the better deal, with Bardot's beautiful bum gracing the screen for a few glorious minutes. I was unsatisfied with this follow-up to Breathless. I think I avoided Godard for a year or two afterward, but I started liking him again when I saw Band of Outsiders. I pretty much ate up all of his other films afterward, loving most of them. I had always meant to get back to Contempt, but never did. Unfortunately, several years ago, particularly after Notre Musique, I fell out of love with Godard. This second viewing of Contempt is the first Godard film I've watched or rewatched since Notre Musique (though I've bought several, including Contempt). I wonder, if I had watched it when I was in my Godard period, would I have loved it as I did so many others? Strangely enough, I felt almost exactly the same way about Contempt that I felt about it the first time: it's gorgeous, but, lord, is it a bore. I can almost live on the images alone - especially all the images of Bardot. But, much like Bardot herself, Contempt comes across as gorgeous but utterly empty. None of the other performances are any good, either. Palance, whom in general I like, is particularly awful. Piccoli is a total bore, too, and I can't help feeling a man who looks so much like an ape shouldn't be with Bardot. It's interesting to see Fritz Lange as an actor, but he doesn't have much to do. Really, the only character I had any real attraction to was Giorgia Moll, who may be even prettier than Bardot. The film'd almost be better without any people in it - the scenery is plenty good. But they'd also have to remove that terrible, repetitive score to make it worth sitting through - it's easily the worst part of the whole film. "But it's Brechtian!" my film professor would say. "*beep* off!" I would reply.