''Contempt'' (french: Le Mépris, link=no) is a 1963
French New Wave drama film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super ...
written and directed by
Jean-Luc Godard, based on the 1954 Italian novel ''
Il disprezzo'' (''A Ghost at Noon'') by
Alberto Moravia
Alberto Moravia ( , ; born Alberto Pincherle ; 28 November 1907 – 26 September 1990) was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation and existentialism. Moravia is best known for his de ...
. It stars
Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot ( ; ; born 28 September 1934), often referred to by her initials B.B., is a former French actress, singer and model. Famous for portraying sexually emancipated characters with hedonistic lifestyles, she was one of the ...
,
Michel Piccoli
Jacques Daniel Michel Piccoli (27 December 1925 – 12 May 2020) was a French actor, producer and film director with a career spanning 70 years. He was lauded as one of the greatest French character actors of his generation who played a wide vari ...
,
Jack Palance, and
Giorgia Moll
Giorgia Moll (born 14 January 1938) is an Italian film actress. She was sometimes credited as Georgia Moll and Georgia Mool.
Background
Moll was born in Prata di Pordenone to a German father and an Italian mother. At a young age, she began a br ...
.
Plot
Paul Javal, a young French playwright who has found commercial success in Rome, accepts an offer from vulgar American producer Jeremy Prokosch to rework the script for German director
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton Lang (; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), known as Fritz Lang, was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States.Obituary ''Variety'', August 4, 1976, p. 6 ...
's screen adaptation of the ''
Odyssey
The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Iliad'', th ...
''.
Paul's wife, Camille Javal, joins him on the first day of the project at
Cinecittà
Cinecittà Studios (; Italian for Cinema City Studios), is a large film studio in Rome, Italy. With an area of 400,000 square metres (99 acres), it is the largest film studio in Europe, and is considered the hub of Italian cinema. The studios we ...
. As the first discussions are completed, Prokosch invites the crew to join him at his villa, offering Camille a ride in his two-seat sportscar. Camille looks to Paul to decline the offer, but he submissively withdraws to follow by taxi, leaving Camille and Prokosch alone. Paul does not catch up with them until 30 minutes later, explaining that he was delayed by a traffic accident. Camille grows uneasy, secretly doubting his honesty and suspecting that he is using her to cement his ties with Prokosch. Her misgivings are heightened when she sees Paul grope Prokosch's secretary, Francesca. Back at their apartment, Paul and Camille discuss the subtle uneasiness that has come between them in the first few hours of the project, and Camille suddenly announces to her bewildered husband that she no longer loves him.
Hoping to rekindle Camille's love, Paul convinces her to accept Prokosch's invitation to join them for filming in
Capri. Prokosch and Lang are locked in a conflict over the correct interpretation of Homer's work, an impasse exacerbated by the difficulty of communication between the German director, French script writer, and American producer. Francesca acts as interpreter, mediating all conversations. When Paul sides with Prokosch against Lang by suggesting that Odysseus actually left home because of his wife's infidelity, Camille's suspicions of her husband's servility are confirmed. She deliberately allows him to find her in Prokosch's embrace, and in the ensuing confrontation she implies that her respect for him has turned to contempt because he has bartered her to Prokosch. He denies this suggestion, offering to sever his connection with the film and leave Capri; but she will not recant and leaves for Rome with the producer. After a car crash in which Camille and Prokosch are killed, Paul prepares to leave Capri and return to the theater. Lang continues to work on the film.
Cast
*
Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot ( ; ; born 28 September 1934), often referred to by her initials B.B., is a former French actress, singer and model. Famous for portraying sexually emancipated characters with hedonistic lifestyles, she was one of the ...
as Camille Javal
*
Michel Piccoli
Jacques Daniel Michel Piccoli (27 December 1925 – 12 May 2020) was a French actor, producer and film director with a career spanning 70 years. He was lauded as one of the greatest French character actors of his generation who played a wide vari ...
as Paul Javal
*
Jack Palance as Jeremy Prokosch
*
Giorgia Moll
Giorgia Moll (born 14 January 1938) is an Italian film actress. She was sometimes credited as Georgia Moll and Georgia Mool.
Background
Moll was born in Prata di Pordenone to a German father and an Italian mother. At a young age, she began a br ...
as Francesca Vanini
*
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton Lang (; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), known as Fritz Lang, was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States.Obituary ''Variety'', August 4, 1976, p. 6 ...
as himself
*
Raoul Coutard
Raoul Coutard (16 September 1924 – 8 November 2016) was a French cinematographer. He is best known for his connection with the Nouvelle Vague period and particularly for his work with director Jean-Luc Godard. Coutard also shot films for New Wa ...
as the cameraman
*
Jean-Luc Godard as Lang's assistant director
*
Linda Veras as a
Siren
Production
Italian film producer
Carlo Ponti approached Godard to discuss a possible collaboration; Godard suggested an adaptation of Moravia's novel ''
Il disprezzo'' (originally translated into English with the title ''A Ghost at Noon'') in which he saw
Kim Novak
Marilyn Pauline "Kim" Novak (born February 13, 1933) is an American retired film and television actress and painter.
Novak began her career in 1954 after signing with Columbia Pictures and quickly became one of Hollywood's top box office stars, ...
and
Frank Sinatra as the leads; they refused. Ponti suggested
Sophia Loren and
Marcello Mastroianni, whom Godard refused.
Anna Karina
Anna Karina (born Hanne Karin Blarke Bayer; September 22, 1940 – December 14, 2019) (by then Godard's former wife) later revealed that the director had traveled to Rome to ask
Monica Vitti
Monica Vitti (born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli; 3 November 1931 – 2 February 2022) was an Italian actress who starred in several award-winning films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni during the 1960s. After working with Antonioni, Vitti changed fo ...
if she would portray the female lead. However the Italian actress reportedly turned up an hour late, "staring out the window like she wasn't interested at all". Finally, Bardot was chosen because of the producer's insistence that the profits might be increased by displaying her famously sensual body. This provided the film's opening scene, filmed by Godard as a typical mockery of the cinema business with tame nudity. The scene was shot after Godard considered the film finished, at the insistence of the American co-producers. In the film, Godard cast himself as Lang's assistant director, and characteristically has Lang expound many of Godard's
New Wave theories and opinions. Godard also employed the two "forgotten" New Wave filmmakers,
Luc Moullet and
Jacques Rozier, on the film. Bardot visibly reads a book about Fritz Lang that was written by Moullet, and Rozier made the documentary short about the making of the film ''
Le Parti des Choses''.
Godard admitted to changing the original novel, "but with full permission" of Moravia, the original writer. Among his changes were focusing the action to only a few days and changing the writer character from being "silly and soft. I've made him more American—something like a
Humphrey Bogart type."
Filming
''Contempt'' was filmed in Italy where it is set, with location shooting at the
Cinecittà
Cinecittà Studios (; Italian for Cinema City Studios), is a large film studio in Rome, Italy. With an area of 400,000 square metres (99 acres), it is the largest film studio in Europe, and is considered the hub of Italian cinema. The studios we ...
studios in Rome and the
Casa Malaparte on
Capri island. In a sequence, the characters played by Piccoli and Bardot wander through their apartment alternately arguing and reconciling. Godard filmed the scene as an extended series of
tracking shots, in natural light and in near real-time. The cinematographer
Raoul Coutard
Raoul Coutard (16 September 1924 – 8 November 2016) was a French cinematographer. He is best known for his connection with the Nouvelle Vague period and particularly for his work with director Jean-Luc Godard. Coutard also shot films for New Wa ...
also shot some of the other ''nouvelle vague'' films, including Godard's ''
Breathless'' (1960). According to
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Godard was also directly influenced by
Jean-Daniel Pollet and
Volker Schlöndorff
Volker Schlöndorff (; born 31 March 1939 Friday) is a German film director, screenwriter and producer who has worked in Germany, France and the United States. He was a prominent member of the New German Cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s ...
's ''
Méditerranée'', released earlier the same year.
Godard admitted his tendency to get actors to improvise dialogue "during the peak moment of creation" often baffled them. "They often feel useless," he said. "Yet they bring me a lot... I need them, just as I need the pulse and colours of real settings for atmosphere and creation."
Critical reception
On the
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film has an approval rating of 91% based on 58 reviews, with an average score of 8.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "This powerful work of essential cinema joins '
meta' with '
physique,' casting Brigitte Bardot and director Godard's inspiration Fritz Lang."
''
Sight & Sound
''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...
'' critic
Colin MacCabe
Colin Myles Joseph MacCabe (born 9 February 1949) is an English academic, writer and film producer. He is currently a distinguished professor of English and film at the University of Pittsburgh. referred to ''Contempt'' as "the greatest work of art produced in postwar Europe."
Bosley Crowther
Francis Bosley Crowther Jr. (July 13, 1905 – March 7, 1981) was an American journalist, writer, and film critic for ''The New York Times'' for 27 years. His work helped shape the careers of many actors, directors and screenwriters, though his ...
of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' called the film "luxuriant" but wrote that Godard "could put his talents to more intelligent and illuminating use"; according to Crowther, who is unclear about the motivations of the main characters, "Mr. Godard has attempted to make this film communicate a sense of the alienation of individuals in this complex modern world. And he has clearly directed to get a tempo that suggests irritation and ennui."
Legacy
French journalist Antoine de Gaudemar made a one-hour documentary in 2009 about ''Contempt'', ''Il était une fois... Le Mépris'' (''A Film and Its Era: Contempt'') using footage from Jacques Rozier's earlier documentaries ''
Paparazzi
Paparazzi (, ; ; singular: masculine paparazzo or feminine paparazza) are independent photographers who take pictures of high-profile people; such as actors, musicians, athletes, politicians, and other celebrities, typically while subjects ...
'' (1963), ''Le Parti des Choses'' (1964), and
André S. Labarthe's ''Le dinosaure et le bébé'' (1967).
In 2012, Godard's film ranked 21st on critic's poll and 44th on director's poll in
Sight & Sound
''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...
magazine's
100 greatest films of all time list.
The extended apartment sequence that occurs in the film, where Paul and Camille's marriage unravels, has been praised by critics and scholars. In February 2012, ''Interiors'', an online journal that is concerned with the relationship between architecture and film, released an issue that discussed how space is used in this scene. The issue highlights how Jean-Luc Godard uses this constricted space to explore Paul and Camille's declining relationship.
The song "Theme de Camille", which was originally composed for ''Contempt'', is used as a main theme in the 1995 film ''
Casino
A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live entertai ...
''.
A still from the film was used as the official poster for the
2016 Cannes Film Festival.
In 2018 the film ranked 60th on the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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...
's list of the 100 greatest foreign-language films, as voted on by 209 film critics from 43 countries.