Contempt (1963)

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Starring Michel Piccoli, Brigette Bardot, Jack Palance, Fritz Lang, Giorgia Moll, Raoul Coutard.

Semi-existential account of the making of a movie adaptation of “The Odyssey” in Rome—Piccoli is the playwright toiling over the script, Bardot is his frustrated wife, Lang plays himself as a tongue-in-cheek gag, Palance is the vulgar and temperamental American producer, and Moll the translator stuck in the middle of the fray. Contempt is aimed in multiple directions in this relatively commercial and conventional effort from Godard (by his standards, that is); some at the film industry with its haphazard misinterpretations of the Homeric epic being adapted on two levels, some at the producers financing his film with Palance jumping down throats and struggling to communicate with the multi-national crew, some at Godard’s own abrasive marriage as seen in a lengthy spousal spat that might make for an arresting half-hour of film but doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the movie, and some at the audience for coming to leer at bombshell starlet Bardot and instead getting cruelly unsatisfying teases, force-fed themes, and strains of sanctimony. A film about artistic compromise is bound to feel compromising itself in this kind of out-through-the-in-door gamesmanship. Like another highly-praised film out of Europe from the same year (Fellini’s 8½), it falls far short of “checking all my boxes”, but it’s a fascinating mess, and in fits and starts, it summons the intellectual and nostalgic pleasures of other top-tier filmmaking sagas, from Ed Wood to Day for Night…and then Godard’s unorthodox attitudes have to come and get in the way. Director of photography Raoul Coutard, who captures ravishing images throughout, plays the in-movie cameraman as well. Inspired by an Italian novel, “Il Disprezzo”, by Alberto Moravia. Original French title: Le Mépris.

80/100