Le Mepris

“The greatest work of art produced in postwar Europe” (Colin MacCabe)

Jean-Luc Godard’s classic is a monumental work of cinema that has enraptured spectators and critics alike over the last 45 years. A treatise on the nature of cinema, art and life, this is intellectual cinema in one if its most purist and definitive manifestations. Michel Piccoli plays Paul Javel, an author who is hired by American producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) to re-write a film about Homer’s Odyssey, which is being directed by Fritz Lang. Paul finds himself caught between the competing financial and artistic visions of his producer and director, while the relationship with his wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot), whom Jeremy tenaciously courts, slowly crumbles.

Godard’s film is a mutli-layered work, which incorporates aspects of his personal life (the disintegration of his marriage to Anna Karina) and knowing references to the world of film. In addition to the production circumstances of Le Mépris itself, Godard offers his insights into the style, message and essence of cinema as a whole, which is in constant collision between commercial and creative forces as personified by Palance’s mercenary producer and Lang’s uncompromising director.

In the midst of this battleground is Bardot’s Camille, beauty incarnate, who is vied for on all sides. Her husband Paul (Piccoli) essentially pimps her out in the quest for career advancement, much in the same way the aspiring painter Nicolas offers up Emmanuelle Béart’s Marianne to the Piccoli’s great artist Frenhofer in Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse almost 30 years later.

The classic themes of the film are heightened by direct allusion to the story of Odysseus, Penelope and Poseidon (here Paul, Camille and Jeremy) and the film attains it aspirations of grandeur through some of the most striking visuals and music in cinematic history. Raoul Coutard’s pristine photography captures the beauty of the antique setting and Bardot’s body with discreet charm, while Georges Delerue’s score evocatively inserts a sense of tragedy to the images (it would be later re-used by Scorsese in Casino).

The parts synthesize into a sublime whole where life and cinema meet. For Godard, “Le Mépris proves that in cinema as in life, there are no secrets, nothing to elucidate, you just need to live and film”.