"Gods, I like Gods. I know exactly how they feel." -- Jack Prokosch in Contempt
"Gods, I like Gods. I know exactly how they feel." -- Jack Prokosch in Contempt
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In the opening shot, Godard destroys the line that separates film from reality: In the distance, at the far end of a receding line of dolly tracks, a camera crew follows a pair of actors as they slowly stroll toward the screen. As they approach, they move out of frame, leaving the camera operator in the center of the image. He carefully adjusts his lens until it's aimed directly at us, the audience. Like it or not, we've just been cast in a Godard film.
When Paul is roped into a project with the crass American film producer, Jeremiah Prokosch (Jack Palance), Camille's emotions curdle as she watches her husband prostitute himself. Prokosch has come to Europe to bastardize an adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey, directed by the legendary Fritz Lang (playing himself). Lang wants to make slow, cerebral art. Prokosch wants a rewrite filled with topless mermaids wiggling their tails. Paul needs the money. In two key scenes, Camille wants Paul to intervene when Prokosch makes lecherous advances toward her, but Paul doesn't. Camille is humiliated. Her frustration eventually festers into the acidic emotion of the title, and the undeniable power and beauty of the film comes from feeling her pain.
Godard, in 1963, was disillusioned by the crisis facing both the American and European film industries. Not only was the "golden age" of the American studio system collapsing—the hallowed place that had given birth to the auteurs that French critics like Godard had championed—the European industry was facing the onslaught of American culture. Godard: "It's always a bit sad when I see Lang in the film. He was touched that the young filmmakers admired him, but it was mostly because he needed money that he accepted." (Imagine a reality where Fritz Lang compromises himself for money.)
-- capsule taken in part from Cinemania |
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Made in:
1963 |
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Cast: |
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Directed by:
Jean-Luc Godard |
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No
director in the history of cinema is more obsessed with the
connection between human relations and film history than
Jean-Luc Godard. His Contempt, made in 1963, is the
clearest and most moving example of this obsession. 
Contempt
(Le Mepris) is Godard's mostly faithful adaptation of
an Alberto Moravia novel. The film revolves around the
disintegrating relationship between screenwriter Paul Javel
(Michel Piccoli) and his wife, Camille (Brigitte Bardot).
Most
of the film mirrors events off-screen, but you don't need to
know the background to be gripped by a relationship—not
to mention an art form—that suffers from the pressure
of decadence and decay. However, the background certainly
adds dimension: Paul and Camille's relationship reflects
Godard's own with Anna Karina, the actress to whom he was
married at the time. (Cinematographer Raoul Coutard referred
to Contempt as "a letter to [Godard's]
wife.") Furthermore, Godard's animosity for Carlo Ponti, the
Italian producer of the film, and Joseph E. Levine, the
"self-proclaimed" American movie mogul who also had a hand
in production, is visible in Godard's portrayal of Prokosch.
The scene in which Prokosch kicks film canisters around a
screening room is based on an actual Ponti temper tantrum.
Adding
to the on- and off-screen venom, Palance and Godard
squabbled continuously during production. At one point in
the film, after another Prokosch tantrum, Lang says quietly,
"Is that a request or an order?" (Babbling away after the
fact on The Tonight Show, and continuing the
dissolution between Godard's film and the real world,
Palance made a passing reference to his work with "some
French director.") As Godard remarked in an interview,
"Contempt is the story of this world." 
Using
his perception of a faltering industry, and wedding it to
intimate observation of his own personal relationships,
Godard came up with the most orthodox film he's ever made.
Not only is it almost "normal" storytelling, it's the
clearest window into the tradition of Godard himself. He's a
director who doesn't just make milestones—he makes
milestones by referencing the world of film around him.
Contempt is ultimately a picture about filmmaking,
but, like all of film history, it's Godard's autobiography.