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Contempt

Original title: Le mépris
  • 19631963
  • Not RatedNot Rated
  • 1h 42m
IMDb RATING
7.5/10
33K
YOUR RATING
Contempt (1963)
Trailer for Contempt: 50th Anniversary Restoration
Play trailer2:50
2 Videos
99+ Photos
DramaRomance
Screenwriter Paul Javal's marriage to his wife Camille disintegrates during movie production as she spends time with the producer. Layered conflicts between art and business ensue.Screenwriter Paul Javal's marriage to his wife Camille disintegrates during movie production as she spends time with the producer. Layered conflicts between art and business ensue.Screenwriter Paul Javal's marriage to his wife Camille disintegrates during movie production as she spends time with the producer. Layered conflicts between art and business ensue.
IMDb RATING
7.5/10
33K
YOUR RATING
    • Jean-Luc Godard
    • Alberto Moravia(novel "Il Disprezzo")
    • Jean-Luc Godard(screenplay)
  • Stars
    • Brigitte Bardot
    • Jack Palance
    • Michel Piccoli
    • Jean-Luc Godard
    • Alberto Moravia(novel "Il Disprezzo")
    • Jean-Luc Godard(screenplay)
  • Stars
    • Brigitte Bardot
    • Jack Palance
    • Michel Piccoli
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 142User reviews
    • 147Critic reviews
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards

    Videos2

    Contempt: 50th Anniversary Restoration
    Trailer 2:50
    Watch Contempt: 50th Anniversary Restoration
    Contempt
    Trailer 2:31
    Watch Contempt

    Photos151

    Brigitte Bardot in Contempt (1963)
    Brigitte Bardot and Jack Palance in Contempt (1963)
    Brigitte Bardot in Contempt (1963)
    Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance, and Michel Piccoli in Contempt (1963)
    Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli in Contempt (1963)
    Brigitte Bardot in Contempt (1963)
    Brigitte Bardot in Contempt (1963)
    Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli in Contempt (1963)
    Brigitte Bardot and Jack Palance in Contempt (1963)
    Fritz Lang in Contempt (1963)
    Brigitte Bardot in Contempt (1963)
    Brigitte Bardot in Contempt (1963)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Brigitte Bardot
    Brigitte Bardot
    • Camille Javal
    Jack Palance
    Jack Palance
    • Jeremy Prokosch
    Michel Piccoli
    Michel Piccoli
    • Paul Javal
    Giorgia Moll
    Giorgia Moll
    • Francesca Vanini
    Fritz Lang
    Fritz Lang
    • Fritz Lang
    Raoul Coutard
    Raoul Coutard
    • Cameraman
    • (uncredited)
    Jean-Luc Godard
    Jean-Luc Godard
    • Lang's Assistant Director
    • (uncredited)
    Linda Veras
    Linda Veras
    • Siren
    • (uncredited)
      • Jean-Luc Godard
      • Alberto Moravia(novel "Il Disprezzo")
      • Jean-Luc Godard(screenplay) (uncredited)
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Jean-Luc Godard had been curious about making a big budget production. This film more than satisfied his experience. (He hated making the film.)
    • Goofs
      It is possible that all "mistakes" in the film that involve visible equipment are intentional, or at least intentionally uncorrected: the film, after all, is about the artificiality of making a film, and the initial credit sequence shows filmmakers shooting the film itself.
    • Quotes

      Narrator: "The cinema," said André Bazin, "substitutes for our gaze at a world more in harmony with our desires." "Contempt" is a story of that world.

    • Crazy credits
      The opening cast credits are read, without titles.
    • Connections
      Edited into Bande-annonce de 'Le mépris' (1963)

    User reviews142

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    9/10
    Godard, once again, when he's angry and criticizing
    Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt is a beautiful film visually and an ugly film thematically, depicting the disintegration of a marriage. One wonders how Godard, who had just married the ravishing Anna Karina the same year Contempt was released, managed to write a film so pessimistic about the union of marriage and how it corrupts both parties mentally.

    The eye-popping color scheme of Contempt, thanks to Raoul Coutard's predictably wonderful cinematography as well as CinemaScope, a specific kind of anamorphic lens for widescreen shooting, is one of the defining reasons for this film's greatness. The process of CinemaScope enhances the color extraordinarily, adding a new layer of vivid texture to the film and a spot-on visual scheme throughout the film. Ordinary things like walking along the beach, admiring the ocean, or just simple conversations staged inside unremarkable buildings become a feast for the eyes simply because Godard uses this delightful method of shooting.

    But what a way to use the film's visual scheme to contrast it with its overall bleak tone. The film revolves around an American film producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) who decides to adapt Homer's renowned and iconic piece Odyssey for the big screen. He hires famed director Fritz Lang, who treats the film as if it were an artistic indie film and not the epic he had envisioned. Prokosch decides to hire Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli), a writer and playwright, trusting him to handle Homer's work with the respect he knows it deserves.

    Paul, however, begins to feel increased pressure with adapting this work, as well as opposition in line of his own personal artistic expression as well as studio interest. To add to his already filling plate, Paul's marriage to the incredibly beautiful Camille (Brigitte Bardot) is on the rockiest of waters with persistent fights occurring between the two as well as Camille's hot and cold attitude towards him and their marriage.

    Godard's Contempt is a multilayered piece of work to say the least. The film can be taken as a surface examination of a marriage in total jeopardy, and perhaps a depiction of the death of a practical union between two impractical people, or simply seen as an on-screen showcase for the issues and opposition Godard faced when he began making films on his own in the 1960's. I've already established that Godard is a rebel filmmaker in every regard; he consciously set out to fight against typical French filmmaking conventions and, in turn, pushed French cinema through an unthinkable New Wave movement, redefining cinematic aesthetics, tampering with narrative convention, and even adding deeper morals and themes provided with new visionary techniques and darker tones to films.

    He puts his talents and his desire to destroy and construct to use with Contempt and, in turn, makes a fascinating film. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus on the film states that it is "essential cinema" and blends the ideas of "meta" and "physique," a statement I couldn't agree more with. Godard has always been big on abstraction with film to, at times, treading the line of being inaccessible in what he's trying to say. The best way that I've heard his work put, by a colleague, is that his films "are like having an intellectual conversation." So many ideas are getting tossed around, most of his films lack central ideas (one thing I've been known to critique with his films), and some I find to be next to impossible in trying to extract even some meaning out.

    Contempt is definitely abstract and lives up the description of "meta;" various scenes leave a viewer confused and questioning what they were supposed to take away from a certain part. However, the overarching theme of the decline of marriage and artistic creativity remains accessible and digestible through the abstraction. Just by the inclusion of Fritz Lang, one of Godard's biggest cinematic influences, we can evidently see that Godard is commenting about how warped studios become in money, profits, and the meticulous "Hollywood/film accounting" process that they forget about the visionaries, the film stylists, and those who have original ideas that desperately need to find ways out in the public. Cinema had to inherently be discovered by rebels, illusionists, and subversive artists, and these are the same people that are finding the film industry a harder and harder place to break out, let alone work. Through Paul Javal, Godard details this struggle beautifully.

    As stated, the film's style - or "physique" - is dashing in every regard. When one sees stills from the film taken out of context, one can easily infer Contempt to be a film masquerading in a more positive light than it actually is. However, make no mistake, as Contempt deals with the disintegration of a marriage in its darkest form. If capturing how difficult it was to make a film when you're barricaded by philistines wasn't subversive enough, Godard dares enter the realm of showing how marriage itself is a practical union between two people but people themselves aren't always practical. Look at the character of Camille, who seems to play psychological mind-games with her husband, never really solving anything and just getting him to dance around a whirlwind of mixed singles and unidentified irritations she seems to form overnight.

    After watching what I deem Godard's "happiest" film so far, his sophomore effort A Woman is a Woman, entering into Contempt's world was a rough wakeup call. Godard is one of the moodiest filmmakers I have yet to discover. I'd love to catch him on a good day, but he's so much more thought-provoking, alive, and blustering when he's angry.

    Starring: Michel Piccoli, Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance, and Fritz Lang. Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard.
    helpful•8
    1
    • StevePulaski
    • Mar 26, 2014

    Details

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    • Release date
      • December 18, 1964 (United States)
      • France
      • Italy
      • French
      • English
      • German
      • Italian
    • Also known as
    • Filming locations
      • Isle of Capri, Naples, Campania, Italy
    • Production companies
      • Rome Paris Films
      • Les Films Concordia
      • Compagnia Cinematografica Champion
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

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    • 1 hour 42 minutes
      • Mono

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