Contempt  (1964) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy)

Jean-Luc Godard is a legendary figure in film history, a revolutionary who represents modernism in film in the same sense that, for example, Mondrian represents it in painting. Like Mondrian, Godard rejected traditional concepts of art-as-storytelling as well as the naturalistic palette, preferring orchestrated bursts of primary colors and an abstract or static dramatic structure.

If you like mainstream movies, skip this film unless you just want to see Bardot's famous tushy, which is featured in scene after scene. If you don't know much about Godard and are curious to see why people like Martin Scorcese revere him, do NOT start with this film. If you are already a Godard fan, however, you'll love it because it is a perfect transfer to DVD on a two disc set loaded with extras.

Contempt was Godard's major attempt to prove that he could make a mainstream film. It was a disastrous experiment in many ways. Audiences hated it. Godard's usual fans found it too Hollywood, but it certainly isn't Hollywood enough to please mainstream moviegoers. The idea of Godard making a mainstream movie is about as sensible as Henry Kissinger making Meatballs V, Zonker Harris writing Pentagon strategy, Che Guevara selling Coca-Cola, or Crispin Glover playing James Bond. Godard was so far from the mainstream, that he was clueless about exactly what mainstream taste really was. Godard himself also hated the film, not because he thought it was bad, but because it made him feel like a sell-out. Even though the film's underlying ideas were subversive and cynical, it "looks Hollywood". It was filmed in Cinemascope and featured an international cast of stars and superstars.

Critics, however, like the movie. Note the fact that 100% of the reviews at RT are positive. I guess there is some justification for that position. The recent re-mastering of the Cinemascope print was supervised by Martin Scorcese, and the 2-disk DVD was mastered and assembled by Criterion under the guidance of the film's actual cinematographer. His work is to commended, by the way. The DVD is fabulous, and the film looks spectacular. It is perfectly filmed, and the visuals are perfectly chosen. You could snap off capture after capture and sell it as a photography book, especially the indoor argument between the screenwriter and his wife (in an apartment that looks like it might have been designed by Mondrian himself), and the rooftop and stairway scenes at the spectacular seaside villa.

It's an insider's film. It's a movie about making a movie, a vehicle for Godard to present his own feelings about the cynical profit-oriented producers that he had to deal with from time to time, as represented in Contempt by Playboy-zillionaire-Philistine Jack Palance, who wants his version of the Odyssey to be filled with battling gladiators and toga-clad women, like a Steve Reeves movie. When Palance comes to see a screening of the first cut from director Fritz Lang (played by Fritz Lang himself), he goes ballistic and starts to throw the film canisters around the room.

In order for the script to work, this has to be a boorish act on his part, but he only did what any man would have done after throwing his life savings into some artistic gibberish that looked like a silent movie. Lang's cut featured Odysseus and his associates acting in front of walls painted in bright primary colors, for example, instead of in natural landscapes. Palance roars, "that's not what's in the script", and Lang responds with some rationalization like, "that's because a script is words, and a movie is visual." Frankly, Palance was quite correct to be enraged. The film he was shown was even worse as art than it was as commercial product. It was just plain drivel. Without knowing it, Godard probably understated what a real producer would have done. It seems to me that Lang's character is supposed to represent "film as art" and Palance represents "film as commerce". If this is an accurate interpretation on my part, I sure hope that the complete and utter crap which Lang offers in his rough cut is not really Godard's concept of art. Of course, the Palance character says many crass and foolish things, but if Palance was justified in his reaction to the drivel he was shown, does the plot of Contempt still work? My estimation is "no".

By the way, the acting in this film is as bad as you'll ever see in a major film. Jack Palance is hilariously miscast as the big money guy. Non-actor Fritz Lang, playing himself, would have fit perfectly into the cast of Plan 9 From Outer Space.

In a way this film is a sad legacy for a director who is worshipped by many cineastes. In making the actual film "Contempt", Godard demonstrated that he had no concept of commercial filmmaking. In the Odyssey film-within-a-film, Godard demonstrated that he had no concept of artistic filmmaking. Of course, what Godard did understand was "personal filmmaking", which was neither art nor commerce, but an expression of his own vision, outside the boundaries of convention, tradition, and expectation.

And that is, after all, why he's really important to the history of film. Somebody has to show that the rules can be broken. Once that is established, future filmmakers are free to explore new forms and ideas.