Le Mepris (15.)
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. 1963.
Starring Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance and Fritz Lang. Mostly subtitled. 103 mins
The film starts with a long hard look at Brigitte Bardot's bum, moves on to Jack Palance's face and continues along the downward path it has set for itself. In the Sight & Sound Hot 100 of the bestest films ever, it is in at No. 21, just behind Singin' In The Rain and level with The Godfather and Antonioni's L'Avventura. The company of the first two flatter it, but Antonioni is an appropriate position-mate, because Godard consciously styled this film on the Italian's work with its long takes and the use of landscape to communicate the character's inner feelings.
Palance is a Hollywood producer trying to oversee Fritz Lang's version of The Odyssey. Playwright Piccoli is drawn into this battle between art and commerce when he accepts a generous cheque to write the screenplay. This though causes friction with his wife Bardot, which only increases when they go down to the producer's beautiful coastal house in Capri for filming.Le Mepris is a film about cinema and the title translates as Contempt. There's a lot of contempt here to go round. Piccoli feels he is selling out by working for the movies – because adapting Homer for Fritz Lang must be such a come down for him. Bardot resents him for seeming to passively pimp her out to Palance on a couple of occasions. She may have a point – there doesn't seem much of man beneath that chapeau. Godard contempt though is comprehensive and all embracing.
It seems to me that Godard has the equation of cinema all wrong. Most people look to cinema to be bigger and better than life – Godard makes it less than life. He takes what it is good and then hammers the life out of it through repetition. Georges Delerue supplies him with a beautiful score but Godard just repeats the same snippet of it over and over, until its wistful melancholy becomes abstract and our reaction to it is mocked. In real life overhearing couples argue is uniquely thrilling but watching Piccoli and Bardot prowl around each other in their apartment for half an hour in the middle of the film becomes grindingly dull.
It may be the S&S crowd's favourite Godard but I'd say it was another boring yak fest, languid and slow and lacking the zest and thrill of A Bout De Souffle, Bande A Part, Pierrot Le Fou or even Weekend. Its merits are the traditional movie compensations of stars, sunshine, scenery and sex, all shot in CinemaScope – maybe that's why it is so popular. And maybe that's why it is called contempt.
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. 1963.
Starring Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance and Fritz Lang. Mostly subtitled. 103 mins
The film starts with a long hard look at Brigitte Bardot's bum, moves on to Jack Palance's face and continues along the downward path it has set for itself. In the Sight & Sound Hot 100 of the bestest films ever, it is in at No. 21, just behind Singin' In The Rain and level with The Godfather and Antonioni's L'Avventura. The company of the first two flatter it, but Antonioni is an appropriate position-mate, because Godard consciously styled this film on the Italian's work with its long takes and the use of landscape to communicate the character's inner feelings.
Palance is a Hollywood producer trying to oversee Fritz Lang's version of The Odyssey. Playwright Piccoli is drawn into this battle between art and commerce when he accepts a generous cheque to write the screenplay. This though causes friction with his wife Bardot, which only increases when they go down to the producer's beautiful coastal house in Capri for filming.Le Mepris is a film about cinema and the title translates as Contempt. There's a lot of contempt here to go round. Piccoli feels he is selling out by working for the movies – because adapting Homer for Fritz Lang must be such a come down for him. Bardot resents him for seeming to passively pimp her out to Palance on a couple of occasions. She may have a point – there doesn't seem much of man beneath that chapeau. Godard contempt though is comprehensive and all embracing.
It seems to me that Godard has the equation of cinema all wrong. Most people look to cinema to be bigger and better than life – Godard makes it less than life. He takes what it is good and then hammers the life out of it through repetition. Georges Delerue supplies him with a beautiful score but Godard just repeats the same snippet of it over and over, until its wistful melancholy becomes abstract and our reaction to it is mocked. In real life overhearing couples argue is uniquely thrilling but watching Piccoli and Bardot prowl around each other in their apartment for half an hour in the middle of the film becomes grindingly dull.
It may be the S&S crowd's favourite Godard but I'd say it was another boring yak fest, languid and slow and lacking the zest and thrill of A Bout De Souffle, Bande A Part, Pierrot Le Fou or even Weekend. Its merits are the traditional movie compensations of stars, sunshine, scenery and sex, all shot in CinemaScope – maybe that's why it is so popular. And maybe that's why it is called contempt.
