Review of Contempt (1963) by Luke P — 27 Jul 2008

I've been skimming through the flixter user comments on this film, and I see comments like "Godard's snobbish intellectualism at its height", "just an excuse to use cinescope", or the very worst, an attack on the "30-minute scene of a couple bickering that uses some of the most circular dialogue I've heard." I mean granted, this isn't a movie for everyone. But if you're watching Godard, I'd hope you'd have a better grasp of film analysis. It seems like people often label work they don't understand as "intellectual bullshit".

This film is Godard at his most restrained, most (on the surface) straight-forward, due largely to the large budget and attempts by studio-heads to make it more mainstream that Godard's previous work. This was obviously a frustration to mister Jean-Luc Godard, but like Hitchcock I think he benefited from the tension.

"Contempt" is much deeper on a relationship level than Godard's cuter and cooler neo-noir trago-comedies like "Breathless" and "Band of Outsiders", and it was also his first film to really show off his signature skills with landscape shooting and utilizaton of primary colors. Its that rare side of Godard that isn't messy, isn't overly political or controvercial, (likely against his will) and so allows itself to focus more exclusively upon the two lead characters: a jealous and insecure screenwriter on the verge of selling his soul to a god of the film business (and ruining Fritz Lang's vision), and a trophy-wife who likes bushing buttons and testing boundaries. Her mock contempt becomes real when Paul digs further than he should into her feelings--even when she tries to reassure him, his insecurity keeps him from accepting her words. He keeps calling her a liar until she believes it herself.

What is contempt? Where does it come from? How does it breed? These are questions without answers, according to Godard, and asking them only makes things worse and worse. Lol, sorry I'm a bit militant with this one, but its a movie that is SOOOO layered and wise, and filmed so beautifully and with so much passion that I guess I needed to dedicate a few words here to its defense. Beautiful, sexy, filled with poetry and literature and references to film, while itself contributing and using Homer's Odyssey (along with so much else) to create something great of its own.