Brigitte Bardot stars in a postmodernist Odyssey in Jean-Luc Godard’s first film in color.
Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli), a successful French playwright, receives an offer from American producer Jerry Prokosch to rework the script for a stalled adaptation of The Odyssey. Jerry is locked in a conflict with the film’s director Fritz Lang (the great German filmmaker plays himself), but is distracted from the film production by Paul’s wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot). The couple’s relationship hits a crisis at the intersection of professional and personal interests: the more involved they get in the filming process, the further they drift apart.
The genre «film within a film» may be a perfect formula for Godard’s ironic, almost sarcastic experiments with the medium. The breaking of the fourth wall in the opening scene is one example of him manipulating the viewer’s perception by drawing their attention to the false realism of the film. Using a Cinemascope anamorphic lens for the first time, Godard comments on his choice through Fritz Lang’s sceptical meta critique of the widescreen aspect ratio. Wide screen «wasn’t made for people,» Lang’s character says; it is «only good for snakes and funerals.» The film’s intentionally long middle section, which has the viewer follow the protagonists drifting apart and closer together again in the contained space of their unfinished home, has an extra dimension in the light of that comment. In Contempt, various texts are overlayed and interwoven: Paul’s story and The Odyssey, the reality of the film within a film and the lives of the protagonists.
The film will be screened in French, English, and German with Russian subtitles.
Contempt
Jean-Luc Godard
France, Italy, 1963. 103 min
18+