Contempt movie review & film summary (1997)

Many critics have interpreted "Contempt'' as a parallel to The Odyssey, with Piccoli as Odysseus, Bardot as Penelope and Palance as Poseidon, but it is just as tempting to see the frustrated screenwriter as Godard; the woman as Godard's wife, Anna Karina, and the producer as a cross between Joseph E. Levine and Carlo Ponti, who were both attached to the project. There's a scene where Palance views a rough cut of the movie (which looks like stark modernist wallpaper) and shouts at Lang, "You cheated me, Fritz! That's not what's in the script!'' As Palance hurls cans of film around the screening room, we may be reminded that the film opened with a curious, extended scene in which Bardot's naked (but not explicitly revealed) body is caressed and praised by Piccoli. Insecure, she asks him about her thighs, her arms, her breasts, and he replies in every case that he gazes upon perfection. This sequence was belatedly photographed after the producers screamed at Godard that he had cheated them by shooting a film starring Bardot and including not one nude shot. In revenge, he gave them acres of skin but no eroticism.

Fritz Lang sails through the movie like an immovable object, at one point telling Palance, "Include me out--as a real producer once said.'' The others carry the real weight of the story. Early in the film, after the disastrous screening, Palance storms out and then offers Bardot a ride to his Roman villa, leaving his secretary and Piccoli to follow behind. Palance makes a pass at Bardot, who turns him down contemptuously, and is then disturbed when Piccoli doesn't seem to defend her as he should--is he trying to provide his wife to the producer? That leads to the film's second act, an extended marital argument between Piccoli and Bardot, shot in the disconnected cadences of real life; couples do not often argue logically because what both sides are really asking for is uncritical acceptance and forgiveness. Then comes the third major location, a sensational villa jutting out high above the Mediterranean, its roof reached by a broad flight of steps that looks like the ascent to a Greek temple.

Godard's screenplay, based on the novel A Ghost at Noon, by Alberto Moravia, contains many moments to be savored by those who have enjoyed Godard's long battle with the film establishment. He has the crass producer constantly misquoting or misusing halfunderstood snippets of Great Quotations, and at one point shouting, "I like gods. I like them very much. I know exactly how they feel.'' Lang's character includes details from his own life (we are told the possibly exaggerated story about how Goebbels offered him the film industry, and he fled Germany on the midnight train). Lang also frequently seems to be speaking for Godard, who was forced to shoot in CinemaScope, and has Lang say, "CinemaScope is fine for snakes and coffins, but not for people.'' Jack Palance is not well cast as the producer; perhaps he was too much of an outsider himself to play a craven money man. He seems ill at ease in many scenes, unconvinced by his own dialogue. Bardot, whose role is emotionally easier to understand, seems very natural. And Michel Piccoli (in his first role!) is persuasive as a man with few talents and great insecurities; his screenwriter is quite different from the typical Piccoli roles of years to come, when he played men who were confident, smooth, devious.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46cpqeslaK9tXmQcnBw