Contempt

Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt" is one of the most hypnotic films I've ever seen, there is an unusual sort of melancholy that goes with it which is unlike anything else. The film is about a marriage that disintegrates over the making of a movie, it's also a story of artistic compromises and selling out. It can be thought of as both a love letter to cinema, but one that is also full of bitter resentment.

"Contempt" came along early in Godard's career; he was the new wave whirl wind directing films like "Breathless", "A Woman is a Woman", and "Vivre Sa Vie". Those films basked in a certain free style "anything goes" approach to movie makingmaking, they were alive, free and vibrant, you could tell they were made by a young film enthusiast, but also a master. However, all that changed with "Contempt"; his sixth film in only four years; the innovation and enthusiasm is still there, but with less of his virtuoso touches (although they were still visible in smaller ways), and more of an assured approach.

The story of "Contempt" concerns a French screenwriter named Paul (Michel Piccoli), who has been hired by a crude American Producer, Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) to do re-writes on a filmed version of Homer's "The Odyssey". Prokosch is butting heads with the director of the film (played here by real life filmmaker Fritz Lang as a Godardian version of himself), and wants Paul to re-write the script. Paul decides to take the job partially in part to keep his lovely wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot) living in luxury. But in taking the job, Paul loses stature in Camille's eyes, and she soon begins to distance herself away from him; there is also the unsaid implication from Camille that Paul is not shielding her from his producer's flirtatious advances. This conflict leads to the film's centerpiece, which is a lengthy scene of husband and wife in their apartment. Much is said between them in this scene, and much is left unsaid, they dance around their true feelings, things are implied, second guessed, but the truth is never really revealed to us, it's one of the most honest looks at a couple who can't, or won't fully communicate.

The film moves on to Capri where "The Odyssey" is being filmed; Godard keeps things desolate and isolated, not what you would expect for the making of an epic film. The story weaves in and out of the agony of the making of the film to Paul and Camille's further isolation from each other, soon all that is left to do is finish the movie as best as you can.

"Contempt" is the kind of film that very much mirrors the real life making of it. Godard had a much publicized spat with the film's real producers. There is an infamous story of the producers Carlo Ponti and Joseph E. Levine being upset about the official rough cut of the film complaining that there wasn't enough of French sex pot Brigitte Bardot's naked body. Not one nude scene was shot with her, she didn't even have any sexy costumes to wear. Godard's "compromise" came when he decided to film a prologue for the beginning with Bardot laid out naked in bed with Piccoli as they go through an inventory of her body parts. The scene isn't so much erotic, but very romantic as Piccoli pronounces to his wife that he loves her "totally, tenderly, tragically", which also serves as foreshadowing the couple's disillusionment with each other.

You could sense Godard's own commentary on working with his own producers with the character of Jeremy Prokosch played with an over the top absurdity by Jack Palance. Prokosch sees himself as a God, although he's mindless in the ways movies are made. Going over dailies in the screening room with Lang, Jeremy gets upset because what is being filmed isn't in the script, when Lang protests that it is indeed in the script, Jeremy looks at the pages himself only to find that Lang was right, a nice satirical point that most producers don't even bother reading what they are financing.

Paul's dilemma is choosing the pay cheque over the art, and in choosing that, it causes a rift between him and Camille. There is also the suggestion that Paul is in a way pimping out Camille to Jeremy, although probably indirectly, he perhaps doesn't even know he's doing it, yet in Camille's eyes he is.

The way this film has continued to be so striking and moving is how it stimulates us as intelligent viewers, Godard never spells anything out for us, for some, that's his calling card. The long scene in the bedroom is a tour de force of watching a couple in their mundane ways, but also failing miserably at communication. Harsh things are said, then they seem to make up, but then other things are said, at one point Paul strikes Camille, it's like a dance that almost becomes repetitive. There is a moment in this scene in which Bardot wears a black wig, one that purposely makes her resemble Godard's wife at the time actress Anna Karina, who starred in many of his films, while Piccoli wears a fedora that makes him look very much like Godard, an example of life imitating art, Godard and Karina would divorce within a year.

Repetition runs throughout in "Contempt" that I find interesting; much of it comes from the film's famous romantic score by Georges Delerue, certainly a masterpiece of music in its own right. Godard uses the score very much, it floats in the film as if recalling a certain memory, or feeling, but sometimes it acts as just a reminder of the emotional sadness the film carries till the bitter end. The motif of repetition is done again in a series of jump cuts of Bardot's face in different instances, again, I feel they are used to magnify a memory or an emotion, perhaps this was Paul's reflection of his wife, it's hard to tell, but it adds to the allure of the film.

The ending of "Contempt" seems rather inevitable, but it still comes as a shock and only adds to the melancholy of it all. Jean-Luc Godard was the definition of progressive cinema in the 1960s; every new film of his looked as if he had just re-written the book on movie making. He began with a romantic, freewheeling style which bled into a more political and essay type agenda. Between this time, he made "Contempt", his most moving film, which is something you don't often associate with a director like him. You could say Godard's whole subject of his films was film itself, he said once that "film is alive", and no doubt he was the best one who could see the parallels of both a movie and a marriage falling apart.