Cheap Contempt - Criterion Collection (DVD) (Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Giorgia Moll, Fritz Lang) (Jean-Luc Godard) Price

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Customer Reviews of Contempt - Criterion Collection

There is a modern feel to the film made in color set in Capri, and a feeling of freedom. The plot is that B.B. feels "contempt" for her husband because he lets Jack Palance come on to her, and it works with brilliant subtlety. The ending is kind of another in joke, as there's a bit of dialogue by Lang "death is not a resolution". In one scene the stars are all interacting against a background of current movie posters ("Psycho" among them). And Palance needs a translator from English to French, German, and Italian in the way of the beautiful Giorgia Moll. Lang speaks German, and everyone else Italian, a smorgasborg of languages.

Some later Godard films don't really work well as they are too disjointed (Weekend, 2 or 3 Things...), but here it all comes together.

GODARD DOES HOLLYWOOD
With his subversively titled Le Mepris or CONTEMPT from 1964, Jean-Luc Godard played Hollywood widescreen games while dissing Hollywood itself. Godard undermines the epic Franscope scale with an intimate look at an arrogant producer's attempt to make a modern version of Homer's Odyssey.

Jack Palance is terrific as the combative producer and the great Fritz Lang essentially plays himself as the vetaran director of the film within the film. In a serious but still sex-pot turn, Brigitte Bardot is the pouty director's wife who's fed up with their termagant relationship. And at the center of the conflict is the screenwriter who's trying to please everyone.

This extremely entertaining film with lots of in-jokes about movies is Godard's take on fame, art, and love itself.

The loaded two disc set features a pristine transfer with a wonderful commentary by Robert Stam. Bonus material includes a conversation between Godard and Lang; two 1963 documentaries -- Godard and Bardot on the set of Contempt and Paparazzi. A 1964 Godard interview and a new video interview with acclaimed cinematographer Raoul Coutard.

Bin it.
Regarded by some as Godard's most accessible movie, I beg to differ: Godard has survived because of the freshness and charm of his best films, not as most fawning critics would have you believe because of their intellectual content or ground-breaking film making. As far as intellect goes, the most you hope for with Godard is a ten-minute Maoist harangue interesting now only for showing the then-zeitgeist. As for brilliant, ground-breaking film-making, the same applies - plenty of student films have adopted the same techniques as Godard just to save money or out of pure innocence. If you want groundbreaking, you want Kurosawa or Tarkovsky or Von Trier. What is great about Godard are scenes like the improvised café dance in Bande a Part or the crazy "murder" sequences in Pierrot, scenes which are outrageously witty and cool and original but actually quite simple, like the Beatles singing "I am the Walrus, woooooh."
Back to the point: Unlike his Pierrot, Bande a Part or Une Femme est une Femme in particular, this film seriously lacks charm. The whole thing has a sour mood about it, the actors really look like they have no idea what they are up to and just want it to be over - Palance above all, forced to play a madly egotistical meglomaniac film producer with lines that would look second-rate in a primary school pantomime. Bardot and Piccoli get through it, but you can sense the tension. Lang looks like he's on Valium. No doubt realising that his film was getting a bit irritating as it labours away with tiresome lack of subtlety at a domestic rupture (see same in Femme est une Femme for how it can be done, but this time con brio), Godard goes for broke by repeatedly introducing the mawkish background music all over the place (you can almost see him with an adolescent smirk on his face as he lays it on) to the point of making you groan.
Another thing I frankly don't understand is this: virtually any crit you read will tell you how this was Godard's first and last flirtation with big-budget movie-making. Big budget? It's about the cheapest movie I've ever seen. For example: any producer worth his salt would be surrounded with an entourage and chauffeurs. This guy can barely run to one secretary and drives himself around in a medium-budget Alfa. Likewise Lang. At the Villa Malaparte, a spectacular site on Capri, we see some scenes with a reception being laid out in the back. Look carefully: the "caterers" consist of one old man fumbling around with some plates. The paint is peeling off the walls in the living room. The entire film crew working on the film-within-the-film seems to consist of about three people, and they're not even around most of the time. Best of all, look carefully at the car crash in the final reel. Apparently they couldn't even afford to total the Alfa, so it's a mock up.
Art films are tricky things: the best of them can change your life and lift you to inspiration and wonder. The worst are not worth the celluloid they're made on. But to read all the critics, you sometimes have a hell of a job deciding which is which. Take it from me, this one belongs in the poubelle.