Product Description

Jean-Luc Godard's subversive foray into commercial filmmaking is a star-studded Cinemascope epic. Contempt (Le M pris) stars Michel Piccoli as a screenwriter torn between the demands of a proud European director (played by legendary director Fritz Lang), a crude and arrogant American producer (Jack Palance), and his disillusioned wife, Camille (Brigitte Bardot) as he attempts to doctor the script for a new film version of The Odyssey.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12547 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2002-12-10
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 102 minutes

Amazon.com
With his aptly titled Contempt, Jean-Luc Godard embraced the widescreen splendor of Hollywood while thumbing his nose at Hollywood itself. A rebel with a cause, Godard pursues an iconoclast's agenda, using the Franscope format (expertly controlled by cinematographer Raoul Coutard) to undermine the grandeur of widescreen melodramas. The story ostensibly concerns an innovative production of Homer's Odyssey and the struggle of a respected screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) to please a pugnacious producer (Jack Palance), a veteran director (Fritz Lang, essentially playing himself), and a petulant wife (Brigitte Bardot) who's grown tired of their turbulent relationship. It's all pretense, however, for Godard's mischievous (and yes, contemptuous) deconstruction of commercial Hollywood filmmaking, potently infused with film-buff in-jokes, astute observations about love, stardom, and artistry, and enough glossy style to suggest that Godard had mastered the craft he so willfully rejects. Contempt is one of his most accessibly fascinating films. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

OUTSTANDING!
Criterion does it again. A wonderful, fascinating 1963 film rescued from terrible, faded prints and murky video transfers and made to look - like Criterion's equally outstanding refurbishment of Fellini's "Juliet of the Spirits" - almost like a brand-new movie; as clean and as beautiful as I have ever seen it. Not everyone will "get" what Jean-Luc Godard is up to with "Contempt", and some will get it but still not care for it - fair enough. He never claimed to be making movies for every audience any more than he claimed to be making them for rarefied elites, nevertheless a broad spectrum of us do understand and appreciate his artistic project (of which this is one sublime outcome), and if you can suspend for two hours the narrow, conventional expectations Hollywood product has cultivated in many of us, that number may include you. Robert Stam's alternate-channel audio commentary provides many interesting insights regarding the significance and filmmaking innovations of "Contempt", along with superb analysis of the sources of the story (in Homer and recent Italian literature) and the performances, and some information regarding how the movie came to be cast and produced, which goes a long way toward explaining why Godard made the movie he eventually made. "Contempt" may be Godard's most "conventional" film, but then art is not only about innovation, but also about mastery. If the performances are not always so subtle they are nevertheless wonderfully nuanced, including that of the great director (and non-actor) Fritz Lang, and Brigitte Bardot - still at the apogee of her Gallic voluptuousness - reveals a depth unimagined by those quick to dismiss her bathtub sex kitten persona - not to mention, most of her legendarily beautiful naked body, in Technicolor and CinemaScope. It's as much about how things don't work in a relationship as it is about how they don't work (for the purposes of art) in the movie business, and is as relevant to both subjects today as forty years ago. The second disc supplements include interesting and enjoyable interviews (especially the conversation between Jean-Luc Godard and Fritz Lang), and a short subject about Bardot and the photographers who followed her around relentlessly ("Paparazzi") that's just fun. Disc two also features the perfect antidote to today's movie trailers that go on and on and spoil everything: the one for "Contempt" shows you images from the film but manages to reveal almost nothing about it! This was a home run, Criterion - thank you, thank you, thank you!

Le Mepris
No one has captured the end of a relationship on film better than Godard in Contempt. In between the excrutiatingly accurate scenes between Piccoli and Bardot are musings on the nature of cinema, Homer's Odyssey, Godardian polemics and a practical treatise on the use of color in film by Raoul Coutard. And those tracking shots of Godard! This is a terrific DVD - the image and color are superb, sound crystal clear. Another great presentation from the Criterion Collection. But what I really appreciated was that on the disc's menu screen there was a full rendition of George Delerue's magnificent main theme, easily one of the most beautiful motif's ever written for film. Worth the price of the DVD for that alone.

Penelope Vs. Ulysses or Art Vs. Commerce In The Space Age
One of Brigitte Bardot's few high brow films is an amazing modern Space Age parable of the Homer's "Odyssey" in which innocuous writer Michel Piccoli allows sleazy creep producer Jack Palance (his best film, hands down) have his way with wife BB...she feels nothing but contempt for Piccoli for his apathy... I'm with her...the screenplay to the proposed film is supposed to be about the death of romance between Ulysses and Penelope in Homer's "Odyssey", but life imitates art when the romance between BB and Piccoli rots away due to Piccoli's wimpy attitude toward Palance's lecherous advances towards his wife...then again, Palance clearly reperesents commerce......
This is a superior film to "Breathless", IMHO, .. the film is total eye candy, if not due to the awesome BB, then by the gorgeous locations...
Godard really deserves more credit, he's a consummate filmmaker......Breathless, Alphaville, First Name Carmen, Band of Outsiders...