Monday, March 2, 2009

Contempt (1963)



I'm not too familiar with Godard's stuff, but I really liked Band of Outsiders, and Breathless (I honestly can't remember if I've seen anything else by him). So I sort of had high hopes for this, especially after watching L'Avventura, which I loved, and which someone had compared to Contempt, at least stylistically. But I didn't like this much at all. The characters and dialogue were typical Godard, which was good, but the score by George Delarue was used WAY too often, and drowned out much of the banter between Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli. Was Godard being self-reflexive in his decision to use music this way? The rest of the film is extremely critical of the "industry" of art-films, so perhaps that's a reasonable explanation. In any case, it just didn't work for me. The music is undoubtedly beautiful, but here it just seemed heavy-handed and melodramatic.

And the 30 minute long-takes of characters just wandering around half naked, musing about life, etc...basically the stuff I loved about Breathless, just didn't seem to work in this. They seemed to be part of another film, and didn't seem to work against the more conventional scenes with Jack Palance and the whole "businessman vs. artist" dynamic. The parallels drawn between Javal's decision to sell out and his failing relationship with his wife were forced, maybe sort of preachy too.

And maybe I'm giving the music choice too much credit, but I really think it was like 50% of the reason I wasn't buying this movie.

But um, Brigitte Bardot is really really hot.

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