Contempt
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
- drama
- romance
The story
Art film producer Jeremy Prokosch, unhappy with the work of his director, hires Fritz Lang (as himself) to direct an adaptation of The Odyssey, but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb, he brings in a screenwriter to energise the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.
What it’s like
Flat, saturated Cinemascope colour in Godard's Contempt: sunlit Mediterranean whites, the vivid blue of the sea and a villa interior of pale modernist walls, all shot with long, deliberately unhurried takes that let people sit in a room and slowly drift apart. Camera movement is minimal and often lateral, the frame sometimes cutting a character in half, and the sound is a sparse, melancholy score by Georges Delerue that surfaces mainly between the long silences of a shared meal or a drive along the coast. Vibe: sun-bleached unease, cool and articulate, with a tender ache underneath. It suits a slow weekend afternoon or a quiet evening when you want something elegant rather than urgent. The pace is measured and conversational, and the emotional register is wry and wounded, watching a marriage curdle with a kind of clear-eyed detachment. Its intensity is low: there is nudity and sensual intimacy, a brief upsetting car accident, and arguments that sting, but no real violence or gore. For cinephiles and viewers who enjoy talky, formally deliberate films about love, art and the compromises of making a movie.
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