Contempt (French)

• Year: 1963

• Cast: Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli

A long with the oneiric whimsy of Fellini바카라�s 8 1/2 and Truffaut바카라�s madly hectic Day For Night, Godard바카라�s Contempt is one of the great films about the making of a film, or the difficulties of doing so. 바카라�A producer is something I can live without,바카라� says the great director Fritz Lang, playing himself (and speaking in German), about the philistine American producer (Jack Palance, who speaks English). Their tortured relationship, on the sets of Odyssey, is rep­eated in all relations in the film바카라�especially between Paul (Piccoli), the harried screenplay writer grappling with art­istic compromise, and his wife Camille (Bardot), both of whom speak French. A polyglot Italian interpreter provides a multi-lingual translation, amplifying the difficulties of communication among the protagonists. Godard바카라�s voluptuous, sunlit film is a shuffling, like so many cards, of motifs modern and classical, as the gentle swell of the theme music mirror the sea around Capri. The exquis­itely crafted conversation seq­uence in Paul and Camille바카라�s flat, with its waxing and waning of love, is a masterpiece of indoor shooting. And the opening sequence바카라�a clinical stocktaking of Bardot바카라�s good parts바카라�was insisted upon by Carlo Ponti, thus adding a layer of reality on cinema.