BrokenProjector.com

Films about Film: Observations and Thoughts on Godard’s Contempt (1963)

Contempt was one of those films that blew me away from the first frame. It was my first experience of a Jean-Luc Godard film and really nobody warned me about anything about this iconic film. Godard brings forward a sort of fearlessness that no one else can. Contempt was the first commercial venture for Godard, having built a notorious reputation as a ruthless new wave director responsible for Breathless (A Bout de Soufflé, 1959), the film accused for kick-starting the French New Wave (alongside Truffaut’s The 400 Blows). But Godard is Godard. Even with a near million-dollar budget, he faithfully sticks to his arsenal of jump-cuts, long takes, casual improvisational acting and his constant jabs at the long-standing clichés of Hollywood-established cinema technique.

Contempt (titled Le Mépris in French) is an epic in its own right. The film is shot entirely in Italy in the rich tones of Technicolor starring the likes of Jack Palance, Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli and master filmmaker Fritz Lang as himself. The entire film is visually stunning, especially the unusual blueness of the sea. The soundtrack was composed by the multi-award winning French composer Georges Delerue. Delerue composed the film’s signature haunting leitmotif “Theme de Camille” which Godard uses almost excessively throughout the film but never once does it get annoying but rather it builds up in layers as the film progresses. To me personally, this theme alone perfectly sums up the entire feel of the film so much that every time I listen to it, I remember the film as if I’ve just finished watching it (for a fantastic view on the theme you can visit Kimberly’s article at Cinebeats).

The Legendary Cast

The film really is carried by the three lead acting roles: Hollywood producer Jeremy Prokosch (played by Jack Palance), newly hired writer Paul Javal (played by Michel Piccoli) and his enchantingly beautiful wife Camille Javal (played by the enchantingly beautiful Brigitte Bardot). Fritz Lang plays himself as the respected director who is hired by Prokosch to make an adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. In an uncredited role, Godard cast himself as Fritz Lang’s assistant.

The film follows the same fluidity and the casual improvisational acting technique that Godard perfected since his debut in Breathless (1959) but is clearly enhanced and updated to a higher quality, partly caused by the casting of seasoned actors and a much higher budget. Jack Palance has the most presence and brings out a brilliant performance in which he travels through various layers of ambition, dissatisfaction, irritation, vanity, madness, sadness and ultimately irony. Certainly the best of his scenes is in the beginning of the film when Prokosch, Lang and Javal have finished viewing test footage of Lang’s adaptation and he starts hurling cans of filmstock in the fashion of Frisbees, with his assistant desperately trying to recover them only to have Prokosch hurl them out again. It is certainly one of the great performances of the French New Wave.

For the rest of the film, we are left with the newly married couple Paul and Camille Javal. We follow them throughout their day from the moment of their meeting with Prokosch to their never-ending claustrophobic apartment and all the while experiencing them gradually falling out of love. Michel Piccoli fills in nicely as the quintessential Godard male, taking to the next level what Jean-Paul Belmondo had established in Breathless. Although, many may say that the characters of Michel from Breathless and Paul from Contempt are miles apart, a lot of common characteristics can be found between the two characters.

In the end it is Brigitte Bardot who puts the icing on the cake. Opening the film with a highly sensual nude scene, she carries the film forward on her undeniable beauty and her controlled display of the ‘wrath of the woman’ emotion. Though Godard had included the nude scenes of Bardot only later on the insistence of the producers, he later admitted that if he were asked to cut them out, he wouldn’t do it. Really Bardot is only shown nude only in the opening scene of the film in a long sexually charger yet seemingly pointless conversation with her husband and in minor jump-cuts inserted into short bursts of montages that constantly haunt the film (hovering over Delerue’s equally haunting score of course). Bardot also shows us how far reaching her acting talents are with her ruthless display of contempt for her lover who had let her down. Perhaps in a typical Hollywood film, we would just see a heated debate between the two lovers which perhaps would end in their separation (and eventual reconcilement for a happy ending) but Godard has other plans. The viewers and poor Paul never get to know what Camille is really thinking at any given point of time. She appears to be upset with something her husband had done and a moment later she is whispering sweet nothings to him and yet a moment later goes back to being upset. This sort of playfulness is 100% Jean-Luc Godard and something that is of a recurring nature in his films from the new wave era.

The Untouchable Godard

With Contempt Godard slips out of your fingers like some vicious fluid each time you think you’ve had him. As usual, Godard plays around with the methodology of filmmaking and fearlessly keeps the film moving forward with constant experimentation. The opening scene with Paul and Camille in bed begins in a stark red cast and suddenly switches to regular colours a few moments later only to switch onto a blue cast almost immediately. I’ve wondered time and again as to how this could’ve been achieved and I’ve formulated a theory that since the entire scene takes place in almost one single-long take, the cinematographer must’ve quickly brought the filters into place as and when the cue was given. It’s either this or the effect was achieved in post-production (but knowing Godard, this seems unlikely).

In a sudden stab of self-reference, the opening credits of the film are surprisingly spoken out by a narrator as we watch the cinematographer of the film ironically filming one of the actresses of the film in a long track shot. This was an important depiction of the power of cinema as a visual medium, also acknowledged by the narrator after the title sequence. The editing technique had evolved into a much more refined and commercial class but Godard uses very quick jump-cuts within short bursts of montages used frequently in the film, almost re-telling the audience the events that have happened so far in the film.

But the real visual treat of the film is the fact that it is shot in cinemascope in saliva-inducing Technicolor imagery. The brilliant emphasis on the colours red (of the sweater and the couch), the blues (the vast deep sea), the yellows (Francesca’s dress) and the greens (Prokosch’s estate) forms a rich and vibrant ambience for the film. A while lot of grey tones are also used extensively in the form of the roads, the buildings and the suits worn by Prokosch and Javal.

An Unforgettable Film

Contempt has become one of my all-time favourite films. I was amazed, stunned, disturbed, excited and saddened by this amazing film. It was one of the first films that showed me that you can stray as far away from the standard narrative as you want but in the end the film still has to express something even though it might not make too much sense. The only other films that have managed to leave a similar effect on me are Michelangelo Antoini’s BlowUp (1966) and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

In closing, I would like to end with an amusing story from the film, told by Paul Javal.

“I’ll tell you the story of Ramakrishna and his disciple. Ramakrishna was a Hindu wise man. And he had a disciple who had absolutely no faith in his teachings. So the disciple went off all by himself. Fifteen years later, he came back and said, “I have found the Way!” He told Ramakrishna, “Come, and I will show you.” Then he took Ramakrishna to a river. And the disciple went back and forth across the river, walking on water. “See?” he told Ramakrishna. “I can cross the river without getting wet! I have found the Way!” Then Ramakrishna said to him, “You’re a complete ass. With one rupee and a boat, I’ve been doing the same thing for years!”