Godard: Holding Contempt in Contempt.
This week I watched the classic French film, Contempt (Le Mépris as it was titled in its French release in 1964), made by the iconic New Wave film director and screenwriter, Jean-Luc Godard, and based upon the Italian novel, Il disprezzo (A Ghost at Noon, 1954) by Alberto Moravia. Godard’s film is overarchingly about his own craft — the art of filmmaking itself — and not solely its more blatant commentary on the toils of love and relationships. Albeit loosely, Godard’s movie catalogs the events of Moravia’s novel and documents the unravelling of the marriage between Paul, played by Michel Piccoli (goes by Riccardo in Moravia’s novel), and Camille, played by Brigitte Bardot (goes by Emilia in Moravia’s novel). The casting of Bardot was seen as quite a spectacle of the time as they were filming Contempt during arguably the height of Bardot’s career, whilst her status as the iconic sex-symbol she was, was revered world-wide.
Although Godard is usually known for straying on the more avant-garde side of cinema, Contempt was Godard’s first big-budget ($1 million), quasi-Hollywood film, which is readily apparent throughout the film’s sensuous mise-en-scène. We see these varying elements specifically in the casting of Brigitte Bardot’s character and also in Godard’s directorial influence to be able to shoot on-site at locations as stunningly complex as those they shot at the infamous Casa Malaparte in Capri. In Moravia’s novel, Riccardo is a screenwriter-turned journalist whose been asked to work on a script adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey — an infamously complicated plot to attempt to relay onto a screen — and this this be forms the the basic narrative structure of Godard’s film.
Contempt begins with a sensuous scene between Paul and Camille (of which Godard added to his film post-production because the producers expected the public wanted to see more of Bardot’s body), and then cuts to Paul walking onto a film set where a crew is shooting a long tracking shot, reaffirming the metaphorical aspects of this film about a film. Paul’s been hired by boorish American producer Jeremy Prokosch (played by Jack Palance) to rewrite the script of his latest venture; a production of The Odyssey directed by none other than the notorious German director Fritz Lang — played by himself!
The story of Contempt in itself is its own ironic parallel to The Odyssey with comparisons drawn between the relationships of Paul and Camille and Odysseus and Penelope. This is set up even in the film’s beginning with Fritz Lang’s assertion that Odysseus was purposefully taking the long route home to Ithaca in order to avoid the burden of his scornful wife, Penelope, who resented him for leaving her to fend for herself against a motley crew of unsavory suitors. This theory is, in essence, a foreshadowing of the deterioration of Paul and Camille’s relationship as her contempt for her husband only grows the more indifferent he appears to Jeremy Prokosch’s crude advances towards her.
There are multiple references to a world without Gods and divine intervention, leaving us characters to fend for ourselves. To signify this message to his audience, many times Godard would pan the camera to sculptures of Greek Gods and Goddesses with their eyes and mouths blocked out. Another great feature of the film is the captivating lighting captured throughout various scenes, playing with tiny shadows dancing across Bardot’s face. The audience experiences most of Contempt from an objective point-of-view — powerlessly watching the deterioration of a marriage right before our eyes. We also experience Bardot’s beauty through the subjective point of view of the two men, Paul and Jeremy, particularly in several of the film’s montages, which alludes to commentary surrounding Godard’s views on the effects of the male gaze.
Although I’ve never questioned the quality of Contempt, the sheer age of the movie is apparent in a few scenes where some strange shifts in audio tune and pitch occur that take you out of the story…You know when you’re watching TV and one moment the sound is so quiet it must be silent to hear the dialogue, and the next moment everyone’s ducking for cover while someone fumbles to lower the volume with the remote? Yeah, there were a couple of those in there, along with some awkward jump-cuts in the film, but overall, Godard’s iconic piece of cinema has certainly held the test of time.
The underlying message of the movie is a difficult one to grasp because, like in many movies, it’s not explicitly said or explained, however, Godard maintained that the subject of his film is one that should be quite familiar to all of us. He famously said of Contempt: “C’est un film simple sur des choses compliquées,” meaning, “It’s a simple film about complicated things.” This quote has really stuck with me as it couldn’t be truer. In all of its layers, Contempt acts as an ironically impressive parallel to Homer’s Odyssey, in ways relating to the deterioration of both relationships and the film industry, as Godard sees it in his eyes. As cheesy as it sounds, in many ways, Contempt is a story about everything and nothing; as Bardot’s character is an enigma that keeps both the audience, and the men of the film, constantly guessing, forever questioning her motivations, and always unsure.
Bibliography
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