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CONTEMPT

“Contemptible Storytelling”

Family Content: -2 Extreme caution for older teenagers and adults.

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Violence
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In CONTEMPT, the contempt which Camille (Brigitte Bardot) has for her husband, Paul Javel (Michel Piccoli), strains and erodes their marriage. Both are seduced and confused by a brutish American producer, named Jerry Prokosch (Jack Palance), who hires the ambitious, but hapless Paul to rewrite a movie which the producer is filming on the Island of Capri in Italy. Prokosch invites the unsuspecting couple to his villa for dinner, which immediately triggers a series of mishaps which begin to foment serious problems for Paul and for Camille. Meanwhile, director Fritz Lang struggles with filming Prokosch’s interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey.

In 1960’s France, this film was an esthetic sensation. Since then, Godard has become a revered cinema “artiste.” CONTEMPT is not his best work. It crawls, creaks and lurches to a predictable, crashing conclusion. Nor does the music help. The morose, moody composition by Georges Delerue is strangely disruptive and intrusive. The resurrection of this 1963 film would have been better left to cinema’s history books although Bardot is still worth viewing if one doesn’t take account of her stilted acting and her inability to make emotional connection with her co-stars and her audience. An oddly simplistic and flawed story which fails as a romance, CONTEMPT is one classic French film about which moral Americans will feel justifiable contempt

Content:

(Ro, H, L, V, NN, S) Humanist, pseudo-romantic worldview emphasizing marital tensions between a couple; 7 subtitled expletives; husband slaps wife; lower female nudity with no sexuality, but implied adultery; and, emotionally sterile characters

More Detail:

In CONTEMPT, the contempt which Camille (Brigitte Bardot) has for her husband, Paul Javel (Michel Piccoli), strains and erodes their marriage. Both are seduced and confused by a brutish American producer, named Jerry Prokosch (Jack Palance), who hires the ambitious, but hapless Paul to rewrite a movie which the producer is filming on the Island of Capri in Italy. Prokosch invites the unsuspecting couple to his villa for dinner, which immediately triggers a series of mishaps which begin to foment serious problems for Paul and for Camille. Meanwhile, director Fritz Lang struggles with filming Prokosch’s interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey.
In 1960’s France, this film was an esthetic sensation. Since then, Godard has become a revered cinema “artiste.” CONTEMPT is not his best work. It crawls, creaks and lurches to a predictable, crashing conclusion. Nor does the music help. The morose, moody composition by Georges Delerue is strangely disruptive and intrusive. The resurrection of this 1963 film would have been better left to cinema’s history books although Bardot is still worth viewing if one doesn’t take account of her stilted acting and her inability to make emotional connection with her co-stars and her audience. An oddly simplistic and flawed story which fails as a romance, CONTEMPT is one classic French film about which moral Americans will feel justifiable contempt.