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Contempt
Contempt was Jean-Luc Godard’s chance to make a big-budget film with high-priced stars based on a best-selling novel. At the time, fans feared that the iconoclast who changed the world of cinema with his Breathless and Vivre Sa Vie was in danger of selling out. They needn’t have feared. In spite of Godard’s statement that the movie was “a simple film, without mystery,” Contempt is radiantly complex. Based on the book by Alberto Moravia, Contempt stars Michel Piccoli as a playwright-screenwriter who’s lucked into a lucrative job adapting The Odyssey for philistine American producer Jack Palance. But the screenwriter has marital problems—his wife, the luscious Brigitte Bardot, can no longer stand her husband. With Fritz Lang playing himself as the film-within-the-film’s director, Contempt attains brilliant grace through the story of a marriage and a meditation on modern cinema. Presented in a glorious new 35 mm CinemaScope print for its 45th anniversary. (1963, 102 min.)
“One of the masterworks of modern cinema that has influenced a generation of filmmakers, including R.W. Fassbinder, Quentin Tarantino, and Martin Scorsese … it moves us because it is essentially the story of a marriage. Godardians regard Contempt as an anomaly, the master's most 'orthodox' movie. The paradox is that it may also be his finest … with Contempt, Godard was able to strike his deepest human chords." —Phillip Lopate, The New York Times
“One of the defining moments of modernist filmmaking … One of those works in which you can feel the aesthetic ground shifting beneath your feet. Like a Cezanne still life or a Sullivan skyscraper, it yields a low rumble—the sound of rules changing.” —Dave Kehr, Film Comment
Cast & Crew
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
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