Customer Reviews

Contempt [VHS]

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Criterion does it again. A wonderful, fascinating 1963 film rescued from terrible, faded prints and murky video transfers and made to look - like Criterion's equally outstanding refurbishment of Fellini's "Juliet of the Spirits" - almost like a brand-new movie; as clean and as beautiful as I have ever seen it. Not everyone will "get" what Jean-Luc Godard is up to with "Contempt", and some will get it but still not care for it - fair enough. He never claimed to be making movies for every audience any more than he claimed to be making them for rarefied elites, nevertheless a broad spectrum of us do understand and appreciate his artistic project (of which this is one sublime outcome), and if you can suspend for two hours the narrow, conventional expectations Hollywood product has cultivated in many of us, that number may include you. Robert Stam's alternate-channel audio commentary provides many interesting insights regarding the significance and filmmaking innovations of "Contempt", along with superb analysis of the sources of the story (in Homer and recent Italian literature) and the performances, and some information regarding how the movie came to be cast and produced, which goes a long way toward explaining why Godard made the movie he eventually made. "Contempt" may be Godard's most "conventional" film, but then art is not only about innovation, but also about mastery. If the performances are not always so subtle they are nevertheless wonderfully nuanced, including that of the great director (and non-actor) Fritz Lang, and Brigitte Bardot - still at the apogee of her Gallic voluptuousness - reveals a depth unimagined by those quick to dismiss her bathtub sex kitten persona - not to mention, most of her legendarily beautiful naked body, in Technicolor and CinemaScope. It's as much about how things don't work in a relationship as it is about how they don't work (for the purposes of art) in the movie business, and is as relevant to both subjects today as forty years ago. The second disc supplements include interesting and enjoyable interviews (especially the conversation between Jean-Luc Godard and Fritz Lang), and a short subject about Bardot and the photographers who followed her around relentlessly ("Paparazzi") that's just fun. Disc two also features the perfect antidote to today's movie trailers that go on and on and spoil everything: the one for "Contempt" shows you images from the film but manages to reveal almost nothing about it! This was a home run, Criterion - thank you, thank you, thank you!

No one has captured the end of a relationship on film better than Godard in Contempt. In between the excrutiatingly accurate scenes between Piccoli and Bardot are musings on the nature of cinema, Homer's Odyssey, Godardian polemics and a practical treatise on the use of color in film by Raoul Coutard. And those tracking shots of Godard! This is a terrific DVD - the image and color are superb, sound crystal clear. Another great presentation from the Criterion Collection. But what I really appreciated was that on the disc's menu screen there was a full rendition of George Delerue's magnificent main theme, easily one of the most beautiful motif's ever written for film. Worth the price of the DVD for that alone.

One of Brigitte Bardot's few high brow films is an amazing modern Space Age parable of the Homer's "Odyssey" in which innocuous writer Michel Piccoli allows sleazy creep producer Jack Palance (his best film, hands down) have his way with wife BB...she feels nothing but contempt for Piccoli for his apathy... I'm with her...the screenplay to the proposed film is supposed to be about the death of romance between Ulysses and Penelope in Homer's "Odyssey", but life imitates art when the romance between BB and Piccoli rots away due to Piccoli's wimpy attitude toward Palance's lecherous advances towards his wife...then again, Palance clearly reperesents commerce......
This is a superior film to "Breathless", IMHO, .. the film is total eye candy, if not due to the awesome BB, then by the gorgeous locations...
Godard really deserves more credit, he's a consummate filmmaker......Breathless, Alphaville, First Name Carmen, Band of Outsiders...

Camille: "Then you love me totally."
Paul: "I love you totally, tenderly, tragically."

Such is the story of Camille and Paul, whose lives we watch slowly unravel in tender tragedy. This is a movie to be watched and to be felt; to be understood by the part of you that has struggled to change an unchangeable love or the part of you that has felt the urge to desecrate your own life simply out of restless need to feel something new or understand something raw.

To begin with, Godard takes insoluble feelings of love/hate/restlessness/desire/contempt and weaves it under a thin layer of lives, which as you watch, cannot be seen directly but is clearly felt. He foregoes standard cinematic technique/storytelling criteria as he drops changing color filters over Bardot's introductory nude scene and compares the raging emotions of man against the widescapes of the still ocean and skies (as is seen in particularly breathtaking shots rotating around Greek statues with eyes painted in bright red against a backdrop of bluish white skies and a tortuous finale to which Godard himself yells "Silence!" and cuts to the motionless sea).

On top of this, the musical score done by Georges Delerue has been called the most beautiful score ever heard. It is repeated throughout the movie and it comes and goes unpredictably, like the asthmatic attacks that life often unveils at times not necessarily warranted. Altogether, this movie is an honest replication of feelings that course through all of us during the best of times and the worst of times.

What a great movie that is and i saw it 20 times. This is a great transfer with the original movie opening (credits) for me this is the perfect movie ever made, Brigitte Bardot is rather gorgeous and plays Camille in a very passive way, the movie is full of rich colourRed Blue and White, a very intelligent movie and i like the movie inside the movie, A great Cast too Michel Piccoli playing Brigitte husband, Fritz lanf playing himself as the great Film director and Jack Palance playing the american producer . The movie was shot in Capri and the music is simply
haunting. For me this is the perfect movie, and it feeds all my senses, great photography by Raoul Coutard, stunning Location and a very stunning Brigitte Bardot who can prove that she was rather a good actress.THE EXTRAS ARE AMAZING TOO, A VERY RARE DOCUMENTARY MADE ABOUT BB "PAPARAZZI" SHOWING A PURSUED Brigitte. and a couple of interesting interviews of Fritz Lang and Jean Luc Goddard. IF YOU MUST BUY A GODDARD MOVIE THIS IS THE ONE TO ADD TO YOUR COLLECTION. SIMPLY INTELLIGENT AND THE OPENING SCENE Of BB AND Piccoli (when she asked him if she likes her body and ...) is a very arty nude scene added by goddard to please the american producer.One of BB BEST MOVIE ALONG WITH THE TRUTH (Made by Clouzot).I LOVE IT !!!

did you know that the opening of this film by goddard was not in his original script? yes, the opening segment with the nude bardot and piccoli was added on after post-production because the studio threatened to shelve the entire film. the studio was outraged that goddard had 'misused' bardot by not showing any nude scenes. goddard compromised by having bardot shot nude in the opening segment, with piccoli reciting a farcical monologue focusing on the studio's obssession with bardot's naked features.

If you expect one thing from cinema, and one thing alone, then this film will disappoint. Godard challenges the limitations of cinema in aspiring to render ideas normally reserved for print or, at a stretch, the stage onto the screen. Here he dares to present Michel Piccoli as a modern day Ulysses - so Godard expects the audience to engage with his work much like a reader might with a work of discursive philosophy, or a satiric play, or with James Joyce. Yet the work itself is paradigmatically cinematic, with absolutely stunning cinematography and carefully considered use of sound.
*
As with literary forms throughout the twentieth century, Contempt is overtly self-reflexive. It also delights in references to its influences, which are many, prime being icons of cinema history. Fritz Lang, of course, is a character in the film - his presence is authoratative, immediately raising questions as to the status of any of his lines - is it Lang himself speaking, or is he simply 'acting', recounting Godard's lines. Of further interest in this Criterion edition is an interview between Godard and Lang from 1967 - their interaction is as charming as it is revealing - above all, their mutual passion for film is evident, as is their vexed, but by no means simplistic, relationship with film's role as entertainment or 'divertissement'.
*
The broad satire of Hollywood, as embodied in the stylized persona of Jack Palance, is one concern of the film. This refers back to the issue of entertainment, and the question of for whom is the film made. Thus we have Palance at one point replying to Lang and Piccoli, "Whenever I hear the word culture I bring out my cheque book." He goes on to write the cheque using his attractive female assistant as a table - make what you will of what this suggests of Hollywood's attitude to women and to its Faustian control of money.
*
Bardot's presence is just as conscious as that of Lang. Is she a modern day icon comparable to the women who influenced the events of Greek epics? Quite possibly. The story of the Odyssey might best be encapsulated by a quote from Lang in the film itself, pointedly directed against Palance - "It's a fight of the individual against the circumstances - the eternal problem of the old Greeks. I don't know if you are able to understand it Jerry, I certainly hope you can, it's a fight against the gods."
*
A brilliant film and a brilliant feast of ideas. Criterion's transfer is fabulous, and their extras comprehensive.

The Italian writer Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli) is hired to write a screenplay about Homer's Odyssey which will be directed by the German director Fritz Lang (himself) and produced by the American producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance). Jeremy begins to flirt openly with Paul's wife, Camille (Brigitte Bardot), and ends up asking if the couple wants to visit his place for drinks. Jeremy also asks Camille if she wants to go with him in the car to his place. Unfortunately, there is only room for two individuals in his red Alpha Romeo. Camille is hesitant, but Paul encourages her to go with Jeremy. Paul gets delayed on his way to Jeremy's place and when he arrives he finds himself being met by Camille with some resistance. When the couple goes home to their newly acquired apartment, a discussion begins where Camille's resistance ends up with open contempt for Paul. Contempt is an analysis of human relationships where trust, communication, and care is in the focus through the lens of Jean-Luc Godard. The film provides a sublime opportunity for the audience to view the actions and consequences of a variety of individuals and see how these individuals converge intellectually and emotionally in the project on which they work. The result of the screening is a brilliant experience that provides chance for pondering and reflection over the characters' actions as well as the directing and cinematography.

Of the films I've seen so far of French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard, his best is 1963's Contempt (Les Mépris), adapted by Godard from Alberto Moravia's novel Il Disprezzo, published in English as The Ghost At Noon. That statement should not be taken as an acknowledgment of greatness, for although this is his best film, it is not close to being a great film for, despite a gorgeous aping of the Michelangelo Antonioni style of shooting widescreen landscapes and affinity for formal structures, the film lacks any of the metaphysical heft and narrative thrust that propel the best of Antonioni's work, such as La Notte or Blowup. If Antonioni were more pretentious and less a wellspring of ideas, he would have made Contempt. That said, it's not a bad film, and it does exert an odd power over the viewer, above and beyond the nude ogling of a sexy, young, and ineffably feline Brigitte Bardot.... While clearly influenced by Antonioni's L'Avventura- although shot in color, especially in the scenes at Capri, at the famous Malaparte Villa, replete with wedge shaped brick and stone stairs and crags that rise from the sea, cinematographer Raoul Coutard displays that he actually had talent, unlike some of the earlier, visually sloppier films of Godard. The red, yellow, white, and blue palette Technicolor scheme also is effectively evoked to give the film a look that is more modern than many contemporary films, as well as being more modern and mature in the screenplay and attitudes- despite its flaws. Coutard also makes great use of the Cinemascope wide shots- called Francescope in this production, as characters are constantly and interestingly framed at the edged of the screen. Another plus is the use of flashbacks and flashforwards as voiceovers rove, for this effectively demonstrates the faronzaled attitudes of the characters. A big negative, however, is the Georges Delerue score. The main theme herks and jerks into inappropriate scenes, and often adds a melodramatic touch that is almost laughable. It also rises up and cuts off without warning, or any relation to the onscreen goings on, and each instance of its use progressively weakens its impact. In the commentary, Stam claims that the music is used as punctuation on dramatic and/or important moments, but this is simply not so. It is undisciplined and poorly applied. To say the least, Godard was no Werner Herzog with soundtracks.
This sort of artistic anomy- along with that in other aspects of the film, may make many vapid critics masturbate, but great art is not the child that such bears. Too much is left open ended in the film, and that which is resolved simply is not that fascinating, since the viewer is never given enough to care about the characters. In this sense, Godard shares as much `contempt' for his viewers as many of the bad Hollywood films, and the material machinations that produce them, this film seems to criticize. Still, it is his most successful film at connecting with an audience, more so than that other reflexive 1963 opus on filmmaking, Federico Fellini's 8½; although Contempt is not as good a film. Nor is it as nearly as cogent a comment on marriage as either Antonioni's La Notte nor Ingmar Bergman's Scenes From A Marriage. The thirty minute interlude, especially, pales in comparison to Bergman's crackling and realistic, if intelligentsia-laden, repartee.
One wonders what might have occurred had Godard done more big budget films, for the rigor of having to meet some others' expectations disciplined him, and toned down his most masturbatory tendencies. Unfortunately, he never again went so mainstream, a thing which is often a pox on an artist- think about all the Hollywood films of the last thirty years, or that Chick Lit that you are reading, but which occasionally can help a `fringe' artist, with delusions of grandeur and an empty philosophy, mediate into excellence. Without it, Godard is simply Godard, and Contempt a beautiful film that is lifeless and flaccid, where nothing happens. It is populated by mannekins which have no lives of their own. This makes for a pretty window display, but gets old quickly after you've taken it all in.

In the hands of New Wave master Godard, this brilliant, piercing film about alienation and the end of a marriage is also quite overtly about the cinema itself--especially the role of art in relation to commercial interests. Casting sex kitten Bardot as Camille is particularly inspired, as anyone will understand how a sudden loss of her affections would drive a man insane. As a slick, boorish Hollywood type, Palance is wonderfully reptilian, but Lang has all the best lines, effectively ventriloquizing Godard's own views. Lovingly shot in Rome and Capri in dazzling CinemaScope, "Contempt" is subversive food for thought.