Review of Contempt (1963) by Christopher P — 28 Nov 2008

It seems that you either love Godard, or you hate him. As for me...I'm not sure what to think. On the one hand, his influence in cinema is incalculable--he broke so many established rules and brought film down to an elemental level. But on the other hand, he can be quite a stuck-up, intellectualist snob.

I admit was not a fan of Breathless when I first saw it. The characters were terribly shallow and nothing of great interest seemed to happen. Truffaut was my man in the French New Wave. But after I saw Band of Outsiders, which was a work that seemed to better compliment his eariler, messier style, I found myself starting to get a feel for this auteur and his whimsical approach to storytelling.

Contempt is a very different Godard film. Shot in lush, colorful CinemaScope, it seems to some like a self-indulgent exercise in visual style. Like many of his films, nothing really seems to happen, plot-wise. A writer working on Fritz Lang's adaptation of The Odyssey struggles with how to write it, while bickering with his wife off set.

But there is so much more going on here. I've read a lot of complaints of the half hour segment in the middle of the film where Paul and his wife Camille do nothing but argue in their home and repeat the same thoughts over and over. But this relationship is the heart of the film. Paul continually prods Camille to confess his suspicions or at least explain what it is that he did, if anything.

He seems afraid that she doesn't love him anymore. She refuses to tell him why, but contradicts herself by claiming that all is well. But Paul doesn't believe her, and the quarreling is repeated. We realize that the two are so bored with themselves and each other that they are merely seeking out conflict for the sake of conflict. The contempt that Camille ultimately feels, whether it was there from the beginning or not, is manifested by the aggravating desire to know if it exists.