Le Mépris [Contempt] **** (1963, Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance, Michel Piccoli, Fritz Lang, Giorgia Moll) – Classic Movie Review 3011

‘Bardot at her bold, bare and brazen best!’ Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 French New Wave meditation on cinema Le Mépris [Contempt] features France’s number one sex symbol Brigitte Bardot in provocative poses.

‘Bardot at her bold, bare and brazen best! Revelling in Rome, cavorting in Capri… jolting even the jaded international jet-set in her pursuit of love!’

Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 French New Wave meditation on cinema Le Mépris [Contempt] features France’s number one sex symbol Brigitte Bardot in provocative poses, great world cinema director Fritz Lang as a movie director (himself), French star actor Michel Piccoli as a screen scriptwriter and American film star Jack Palance as a difficult American film producer. They are all cinema icons of the era – and Godard uses them cannily.

Le Mépris finds Godard in playful, trenchant, combative mood, taking some well-aimed potshots at the film business, while dissecting the marriage of the beautiful Camille (Bardot) to her screenwriter husband Paul Javal (Piccoli), which disintegrates as he attempts to make a movie adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey in Italy with producer Jeremy Prokosch (Palance).

Godard gets great mileage out of his cast, which also includes Fritz Lang playing himself as The Odyssey’s director, Le Mépris’s real producer Joseph E Levine as its assistant director, its real cinematographer Raoul Coutard as the cameraman and Godard himself as assistant director.

Paul finds himself locked in a battle of wills on The Odyssey set, caught in the crossfire of a creative battle between the artistic-minded director and the hard-headed producer. Paul sides with the producer and his cheque book, making decisions that anger his wife, whose increasing contempt for him results in a tragic conclusion.

The story doesn’t really amount to all that much, and the film may not have dated all that well, but still Le Mépris is a stylish, rich capsule of its time and it affords many real pleasures and incidental delights. Much of it is very amusing and pointed too. Lang is very entertaining indeed, while Bardot and Piccoli work hard to keep their characters involving and the story telling.

You expect Piccoli to be good but Bardot’s acting is surprisingly impressive, matching him blow by blow. Their performances are powerful enough to sustain an immensely long, wordy breakup sequence, helped by being imaginatively photographed by Raoul Coutard. And it’s fun to see Godard apparently so obsessed with Bardot and her body, in gratuitous nude scenes, apparently at the insistence of Levine to help sell the film.

The stunningly beautiful film is gloriously shot on location in Rome and on Capri in Technicolor and Cinemascope by Raoul Coutard, who makes it all look appetising enough to eat. The movie has a marvellous surface and striking visual texture, thanks to Coutard’s playful use of colour filters, and the use of bright primary colours in the production and costume designs.

Georges Delerue’s soundtrack catches the ear in the same evocative show-off way as Coutard’s camerawork. Martin Scorsese re-used his Thème de Camille for Casino (1995).

With a screenplay by Godard based on Alberto Moravia’s Il Disprezzo, Le Mépris is a must for Godard and French movie fans.

It is back on the big screen in UK cinemas on 1 January 2016.

Michel Piccoli was still working till 2015 and turned 90 on 27 December 2015. He died of a stroke on 12 May 2020, aged 94. ‘I do not put on an act. I slip away behind my characters,’ he said.

Brigitte Bardot retired from acting in 1973 at the age of 39 and has since been involved with various animal rights causes.

Jean-Luc Godard died aged 91 on 13 September 2022 at his home in Rolle, Switzerland, following an assisted suicide procedure. He was married to two of his leading women: Anna Karina (1961–1965) and Anne Wiazemsky (1967–1979). He lived with his partner Anne-Marie Miéville since 1970 in Rolle since 1978. His best period is from his first feature Breathless (1960) to Weekend (1967).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3011

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