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Le Mepris (Contempt) Recommended by MovieMail

Le Mepris  Sleeve

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Film Description

A stately, elegant and seductive tale of ideals and compromise. Fritz Lang wants to make a film of The Odyssey, his American producer wants naked sirens and the scriptwriter invites the contempt of his wife by falling for the chequebook instead of remaining true to his art. Movie jokes, magnificent camerawork and a memorable score complement the commanding screen presences of Bardot and Piccoli, Palance and Lang.

 

Film Information

Director Jean-Luc Godard
Starring Michel Piccoli, Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance, Fritz Lang

 

Genre World Cinema

 

Country France Language FRENCH   Year 1963

 

DVD Extras

Bardot & Godard documentary (8 mins); Paparazzi Documentary (21 mins); Original theatrical trailer.

 

Technical Details

Certificate 15   Length 99 mins   Label MOMET
Cat No MP270D   Format DVD   Colour
Region2   Aspect Widescreen
Subtitles English.

 

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5 Stills

 

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Reviews & Articles

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Review by Doug Cummings on 6th January 2004

Filmmakers today are considered prolific when they make a film every year or two, so it's startling to remember Godard's rate of creativity in the early '60s. Contempt (1963) was his tenth film in four years, and it's as stately, monumental, and elegant as his earlier films are energetic and freewheeling. It was also his first film with bona fide stars: Brigitte Bardot (at the height of her popularity), Jack Palance, and famed director Fritz Lang (playing himself). But far from the sort of international blockbuster that producer Joseph Levine intended, the film is every bit as subversive (and illuminating) to its genre as was his earlier A Woman is a Woman (1960). Godard was equally interested in molding a critique of international co-productions by vain producers with deep pockets and iron fists as much as he was in telling an intimate story about a relationship slowly disintegrating from the inside out. The two subjects are mediated through a narrative depicting moviemakers adapting Homer's Odyssey in the Mediterranean and Godard carefully juxtaposes his elements in a way that deepens and expands each thread. "I know exactly how they feel," Palance's macho mogul responds to Lang's footage of the Greek gods, not long before flinging a film canister, discus-like, in a tirade against creative indulgences. "At last you have a feeling for Greek culture," Lang sarcastically replies. Michel Piccoli, on the other hand (playing Lang's pensive and indecisive screenwriter), most decidedly does not-making his Ulysses-like emotional and creative absence one possible source of his wife's (Bardot) increasing contempt while precipitating her own Penelope-like infidelities. But Godard refuses to categorize so cleanly, leaving causes and allusions unpronounced and a film of astonishing formal beauty that has become one of the most widely discussed of modernist cinema.

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Article - "What You Find: Hidden Gems on DVD" by Graeme Hobbs
Friday 5th November 2004

DVD Extras aren't all about dubious 'featurettes' and photo galleries and theatrical trailers. Now and again the format has given the opportunity to release some exceptional features - often early short films by the director or really worthwhile documentaries. Here a...  View article in full

 

 

Article - "And God Created Bardot......" by David Parkinson
Thursday 1st July 2004

It's over three decades since Brigitte Bardot bade farewell to cinema in Nina Companeez's 15th-century soft-core romp The Gay and Joyous Story of Colinot, The Puller-Upper of Skirts. BB was approaching her 40th birthday and had decided to devote the remainder ...  View article in full

 

 

 

 

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Collections & Lists

This film is part of the following Film Collections

 

Films About Filmmaking

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