Contempt
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Short description
Contempt follows a French screenwriter, Paul Javal, who is hired by an American producer named Jeremy Prokosch to rework the script of an adaptation of The Odyssey being shot in Italy. The film is nominally directed by Fritz Lang, playing himself, and the production becomes the backdrop for the breakdown of Paul's marriage. When Prokosch openly pursues Paul's young wife, Camille, and Paul does little to stop him, her feelings for her husband turn to contempt.
Jean-Luc Godard directed and wrote the screenplay. It was his fifth film as director, coming between The Seven Deadly Sins and Le Petit Soldat. Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli play Camille and Paul, with Jack Palance as Prokosch, Giorgia Moll, and the real Fritz Lang among the cast. The film was a French and Italian co-production.
The picture has a strong reputation. Critics give it 8.6 out of 10 across reviews, and audiences on TMDB rate it 7 out of 10 from nearly a thousand votes, a narrower gap than is typical between the two. Its drama and romance framing places a marriage in the middle of a commercial film shoot, and the running time of 103 minutes keeps the focus on that collapse rather than on the epic being made.
What's left behind the scenes
- Legend has it that Godard walked on his hands in front of Bardot on set: 'for every meter he walked, she agreed to shorten her hairstyle and skirt by a centimeter each.'
- There is an opinion that the bored film businessman Jeremy Prokosch was based on producer Joseph Levine, who constantly interfered with the filming process.
- Jack Palance’s frightening immobility, which typecast him in villainous roles, was explained by the fact that he was burned in a plane during the war.
- The film is based on Alberto Moravia’s novel “Contempt” (1954).
- When producer Carlo Ponti reproached Jean-Luc Godard for a lack of nudity on screen, he obediently filmed a panoramic view of the star’s naked body for the prologue.
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