‘Le Mepris‘ (‘Contempt‘) is an attempt by Jean-Luc Godard to use a ‘state-of-the-art’ format and cinema technology for the year 1963, when the film was made. What does Godard do when he has a screen format and film usually reserved for historical blockbusters or high-adventure action movies and an exceptional cast including Brigitte Bardot at the peak of her sex appeal? He makes a film about people making films and about the conflict between the quality films and the commercial films of the big studios, between cinematography as art and cinematography as business. The pretext is a failed love story, the story of the breakup of a marriage. We obviously have a formula known as ‘film in film’ (even ‘film in film in film’ I could say) but the way it is designed made me wonder which is the outer packaging is and which is the inner packaging. Godard is playing an interesting intellectual game with the spectators, but this game does not necessarily generate emotion.
If the film’s producers intended to create a framework that would highlight Brigitte Bardot, at that time the supreme symbol of beauty in European cinema, I can say from the perspective of the time passed that Godard succeeded. ‘Le Mepris‘ includes some of Bardot‘s famous takes (root also to a few still images) included in any album or montage that brings back to the minds of those who lived the era or present to those who came later the icon of the female goddess of the period . Her acting qualities, as many as she had, were not revealed to me in this film. Is it possible that Godard intended to create a character that wraps the eternal feminine mystery in the most attractive packaging possible? The mystery is complete, and it is all the more shocking because Bardot has as partner Michel Piccoli, who, far from staying in her shadow, succeeds to create in his first role on screen a picturesque and expressive presence. The communication between the two and the sentimental plot that represents at least the pretext if not the substance of the film, however, seemed completely missed.
Godard was probably interested in something else, namely telling a story about the film industry, about people trying to make art, given that those who sign checkbooks are only interested in commercial success (and possibly their beautiful wives). For this he hired the famous director Fritz Lang who plays his own role here, of a great creator of the ’30s who having lived into the’ 60s rides on his own legend and struggles for survival fighting with the materialistic and uneducated film producers. It is a document role that Lang assumes with naturalness and charm. Otherwise, each of the five characters in the film has a different style of acting, which contributes to the impression of a poorly finished collage. Godard is experimenting. The camera suitable for historical panoramas is used for indoor scenes and intimate dialogues. The soundtrack mixes the direct recordings of the ‘nouvelle vague’ with intrusive violin music of the movies of the 40s, and generally the sound of the film has passed a difficult half-century, the dialogues being at times incomprehensible.
The movie in the movie in the movie is a story about the gods of Ancient Greece. To a large extent, ‘Le Mepris‘ was intended to be a story tailored to the image of goddess Brigitte Bardot, but Godard transformed the film into a metaphor of the cinematography of the time and of the relationships between its people. My sensation was similar to that I feel in front of minimalist and cerebral modern art. I understand and respect the author’s intentions, my logic is challenged which is good, but the emotion is missing.