*Contempt* is a case study in Making The Most Of It. In 1963, Jean-Luc Godard was permitted a big budget financed by an international production, the use of a CinemaScope camera, Technicolor, a pair of icons (Brigitte Bardot and Fritz Lang as himself) to star in the film, and almost total creative autonomy. No auteur -- with the possible exception of Coppola in the Seventies -- was granted this power again. Godard doubtless realized that this would be a one-shot affair, and thus he directs every inch of *Contempt*. He may permit the actors to improvise, but their improvisations are constrained within a tight circle of elaborate choreography. And he denies himself his usual for-the-fun-of-it non-sequiturs: any New Wave mannerisms (and there are few, especially when compared to something like *Band of Outsiders*) are made to serve the various lines of meta-fictive commentary, philosophical inquiry, and more traditional narrative and character development within the film. One wishes that Godard had been forced to do "commercial" work like *Contempt* throughout his career. Big money appears to have disciplined him; to have honed his vision. This New Wave epic clocks in at a mere 104 minutes, making that other 1963 film about film-making, *8 1/2*, seem almost sloppy and bloated by comparison.
What's it about, anyway? Fritz Lang, as "Fritz Lang", is directing an adaptation of "The Odyssey" at Cinecitta Studios. Hovering over him is the fascistic American producer Prokosch (played with manic bewilderment by Jack Palance). Prokosch is unhappy, because Lang has deviated from the script that has turned Odysseus into a modern neurotic-type who is no longer loved by his wife Penelope. The famous director insists on the traditional view of the epic, and then irritates the producer even more by filming it in an over-stylized manner. Prokosch, realizing that this sort of thing will not put butts in the seats, hires a modern neurotic-type (Michel Piccoli as "Paul") to rewrite the screenplay. Paul, meanwhile, is having problems with his own wife, Camille (Bardot).
It's hard to pin down exactly why Camille has taken a contemptuous attitude towards her husband, though the most likely reason is that he has harbored no small measure of contempt for her all along. "I can't believe I married a typist!" is one of his typical exclamations. Or perhaps she despises him because he sells out to Prokosch and then whines about it. This bourgeois screenwriter, who says he needs the *Odyssey* money to pay off their flat in Rome, is also a card-carrying member of the Italian Communist Party. (And he's contemptuous of her typist job?!) He's the sort of poseur that would drive any woman batty: the perfect modern anti-hero, in other words. Prokosch's ideal Odysseus.
The centerpiece of the movie is the 30-minute scene in the married couple's flat. It's the most sustained, minutely choreographed, rigorously blocked and written stretch in Godard's career. A similar, though much lighter, scene with Belmondo and Seberg in *Breathless* served as a mere warm-up for the display of petty acrimony in *Contempt*. A marriage dissolves before our eyes. Meanwhile, DP Raoul Coutard, doing some of the most brilliant work of his career, pokes unobtrusively around the couple, getting cozy with them in the bathroom while one of them sits on a toilet, shooting them from far across the room, catching Bardot and Piccoli at the extreme edges of the CinemaScope frame, slowly tracking the space between them as they murmur their little hatreds. But never getting too close: if Bardot slams the door on Piccoli, we're left stranded with Piccoli, and from a distance, too. It's intimacy without melodrama.
*Contempt* is chock-full of the multiplicity of ideas -- seamlessly reinforced by imagery and dialog -- that make cinephiles love Godard. I've barely scratched the surface and have already run out of space. But I do want to commend Godard on his courage for daring to acknowledge head-on his admiration of Michelangelo Antonioni's *L'Avventura*. Of course, it goes without saying that Godard can't help mocking Antonioni just a bit; but mocking and paying homage are inextricable within the Godard canon. In any case, today's audience may appreciate the economy with which the French director makes his points (*Contempt* is almost an hour shorter than *L'Avventura*), as well as the arguable pictorial superiority of this film to the other one. The scenes on Capri, at the famous Malaparte villa with its wedge-shaped stairs that lead to a barren deck, surrounded by crags that rise like jewels from the calm sea, are some of the most beautiful ever shot. If this was indeed Raoul Coutard's first work with the CinemaScope lens, one can only marvel at his precocious genius.
10 stars out of 10 -- one of the great art-works of the 20th century.
What's it about, anyway? Fritz Lang, as "Fritz Lang", is directing an adaptation of "The Odyssey" at Cinecitta Studios. Hovering over him is the fascistic American producer Prokosch (played with manic bewilderment by Jack Palance). Prokosch is unhappy, because Lang has deviated from the script that has turned Odysseus into a modern neurotic-type who is no longer loved by his wife Penelope. The famous director insists on the traditional view of the epic, and then irritates the producer even more by filming it in an over-stylized manner. Prokosch, realizing that this sort of thing will not put butts in the seats, hires a modern neurotic-type (Michel Piccoli as "Paul") to rewrite the screenplay. Paul, meanwhile, is having problems with his own wife, Camille (Bardot).
It's hard to pin down exactly why Camille has taken a contemptuous attitude towards her husband, though the most likely reason is that he has harbored no small measure of contempt for her all along. "I can't believe I married a typist!" is one of his typical exclamations. Or perhaps she despises him because he sells out to Prokosch and then whines about it. This bourgeois screenwriter, who says he needs the *Odyssey* money to pay off their flat in Rome, is also a card-carrying member of the Italian Communist Party. (And he's contemptuous of her typist job?!) He's the sort of poseur that would drive any woman batty: the perfect modern anti-hero, in other words. Prokosch's ideal Odysseus.
The centerpiece of the movie is the 30-minute scene in the married couple's flat. It's the most sustained, minutely choreographed, rigorously blocked and written stretch in Godard's career. A similar, though much lighter, scene with Belmondo and Seberg in *Breathless* served as a mere warm-up for the display of petty acrimony in *Contempt*. A marriage dissolves before our eyes. Meanwhile, DP Raoul Coutard, doing some of the most brilliant work of his career, pokes unobtrusively around the couple, getting cozy with them in the bathroom while one of them sits on a toilet, shooting them from far across the room, catching Bardot and Piccoli at the extreme edges of the CinemaScope frame, slowly tracking the space between them as they murmur their little hatreds. But never getting too close: if Bardot slams the door on Piccoli, we're left stranded with Piccoli, and from a distance, too. It's intimacy without melodrama.
*Contempt* is chock-full of the multiplicity of ideas -- seamlessly reinforced by imagery and dialog -- that make cinephiles love Godard. I've barely scratched the surface and have already run out of space. But I do want to commend Godard on his courage for daring to acknowledge head-on his admiration of Michelangelo Antonioni's *L'Avventura*. Of course, it goes without saying that Godard can't help mocking Antonioni just a bit; but mocking and paying homage are inextricable within the Godard canon. In any case, today's audience may appreciate the economy with which the French director makes his points (*Contempt* is almost an hour shorter than *L'Avventura*), as well as the arguable pictorial superiority of this film to the other one. The scenes on Capri, at the famous Malaparte villa with its wedge-shaped stairs that lead to a barren deck, surrounded by crags that rise like jewels from the calm sea, are some of the most beautiful ever shot. If this was indeed Raoul Coutard's first work with the CinemaScope lens, one can only marvel at his precocious genius.
10 stars out of 10 -- one of the great art-works of the 20th century.