Cinefamily’s doing a Godard mini retrospective later this month and on the 24th, they’re showing one of my favorites of his 60s films. Contempt is crazy beautiful and super heartbreaking in a way that feels innovative yet familiar. It’s Godard’s big Hollywood film, and it’s amazing to see what he could do with a big budget. Also, I never realized just how hot Brigitte Bardot was before I saw this movie, which features prominently her butt. Here is my blurb.
Filmed in glorious, panoramic Technicolor on location in gorgeous coastal Italy, and starring the iconic Brigitte Bardot(!) as the wife of a screenwriter alongside Fritz Lang(!!) as Fritz Lang(!!!) directing an adaptation of Homer’s “Odyssey,” Contempt shows that when Godard goes big, he goes tres, tres big. Three years after he made his groundbreaking debut Breathless for mere pennies, Jean-Luc was able to shoot this subversive million-dollar meditation on moviemaking (and its marital consequences), bankrolled by two of the biggest producers in the industry. Managing to celebrate and subvert the language of mainstream filmmaking simultaneously, Contempt trades Godard’s trademark kineticism for a style that’s as solidly graceful as the Greek sculptures in Lang’s film-within-the-film. Part love story in reverse and part meditation on the commercialization of art, Contempt is one of the most aesthetically disciplined and visually distinct entries in Godard’s pantheon of films about films, and just might be the most poignant.
