Before starting with Le Mépris, let me explain the origins of my interest in cinema.
In my first article, I briefly mentioned how I wasn't happy during my first year of university. I had chosen film studies because all my A-level composed of literature in some way and after two years the thought of three more years without the choice to read from my ever-growing list scared me. During my A-levels, my family moved into a home whilst our house underwent an extension. This house was the property of close family friends who had only just bought it themselves and subsequently there was no wifi...the horror...the horror...the horror.
The Apocalypse Now reference is fitting because it was one of the many films that I'd discovered during that time so instead, I ought to be imagining Marlon Brando jumping up and clapping but somehow I don't think he'd have ever followed those instructions. To combat my "no access to internet" blues I went to a well-known chain of stores called CEX. In Exeter, they have an entire downstairs dedicated to DVDs and most of them a hell of a lot cheaper than your bag of chips. I was picking up DVDs for 25p and probably spending £3 at most. Until then I had no real interest in film, I don't know why I just didn't really see it as an art form. Just something to pass the time away on a lazy Saturday night. This assumption was first challenged by (bear with me) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford a film directed by Andrew Dominik. Sixteen years old me expected plenty of gunfights where the baddies might as well have been trained by nuns to shoot and the good guys have more health than a video game character, a few pretty women and cheap jokes churned out by a semi bored failed novelist. Forgive me, I can't remember precise details now, but I was met with long silent shots and the whole time I simply thought it was bizarre. Characters weren't acting over the top and even Brad Pitt wasn't having his natural blessing optimised. After the two hours and forty minutes lapsed, I didn't feel disappointed, I knew I'd seen something so different to anything I'd ever sat down to watch before. The frames were like a painting and the narrative wasn't the most important aspect of the film. I wanted more and more of this and less of the blockbuster.
So let's fast forward to university, the first year is essentially a "taste this and this!". Subjects came and went weekly and I didn't know what was what. I was also unprepared for the depth in which we'd be diving to discuss film but as we only stayed with one topic a week. I felt ridiculously lost. For my A-levels, we spent two years on the same novels, play and collection of poetry. Finally, in the second year, the tasting ended. My first class was French New Wave with it I came round to developing an understanding of cinema. It was the perfect recipe, we watched and learned the techniques and style in which François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda and all the others took a time of political and social change in the sixties and mopped it all up into a new brand of cinema. A cinema which looks into itself and more often or not laughs with delight in mocking money-hungry producers and reminded us of the artistic possibilities of cinema. Film is often argued as a compromise of all the art forms but the critics turned directors of the New Wave or Nouvelle Vague thread together a perfect compromise of humanity subjects. France in the sixties is there on display. Its history becomes current affairs, philosophical thoughts and social attitudes ripe and unassuming. France isn't taught from those who came after and though I know this can also exist in other art forms, in a film you see it in the flesh and there's something about that which makes it triumphant.
So, let's begin a short review of Le Mépris / Contempt directed by Jean-Luc Godard from 1963.
I have wanted to like Godard ever since my class was shown a clip of him and Truffaut trying to force the cancellation of the Cannes Film Festival following the student riots of 1968. It suddenly cut to Godard yelling, "We're talking about solidarity with students and workers and you're talking about dolly shots and close-ups. You're all assholes!". Whilst I don't swing to the left nearly as much as Godard, it was nonetheless the passion he spoke with that made me laugh and raised my curiosity. However, as the class progressed with brilliant films such as Les quatre cent coups / The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959), Hiroshima, mon amour (Alain Resnais, 1959) and Cleo de 5 à 7 / Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962) I was admittedly finding it hard to conjure similar enthusiasm for the guy. If it wasn't telling what a titan of French cinema he is, our lecturer put two of his films, À bout de Soufflé / Breathless (1960) and Pierrot le Fou (1965) on the programme and they never do this. Yet, I just wasn't taken by them. They were so hard to follow and it felt that I had gotten an overload from what I once asked after The Assassination of- you know the rest. I wasn’t willing to give Godard up and how right I was, my dwindling attitudes were rescued by a film described by Martin Scorsese as "one of the most moving films of its era".
Quite frankly, I don't even need to quote Scorsese. When I watched the BFI trailer for a re-release in 2016, I instinctively knew I was in for a treat purely through the aching soundtrack by Georges Delerue. The film follows Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli) a wannabe novelist who now crushingly has to write tacky films for no-nonsense, eyes on the prize, producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance). They're in the Mediterranean, at the cinecittà studios, making an adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, where Fritz Lang plays himself as the director. Now, I know there's meant to be some sort of mirror reflection but the philistine here hasn't read that so I'll have to pass on absentmindedly. Little known French actress, Bridgette Bardot, is Camille Javal, wife to Paul. She is painfully aware of her beauty and therefore acute to actions of the men around her which, unsurprisingly, does create a bit of strife.
The film's central theme is the exploration of the marriage between business and art. Godard presents it as that inextricable link bound to one another through necessity, it may be toxic but a divorce is impossible. As business rears its head, once true passions start to crack with doubt. Marriage, self-worth and artistic integrity. Cinematographer, Raoul Coutard, leads us through this rumble from the Javal's flat where his clever interior shots capture the once loving couple hiding in corners to the open scenery of the Mediterranean. Godard always loves a filter but here Coutard and the Mediterranean ask for no tampering. Open shots of white rocks descending into limitless blue sea create nature's beautiful collage and at times you may have to drag yourself back into the film's story and away from fervent dreams of your next holiday.
A few years ago I watched Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986). I wanted to know what critics loved about it so I looked up some reviews on YouTube. Film critic A.O. Scott for the New York Times uttered a sentence that I now hold as something close to biblical when assessing cinema. He said, "while it's radical and unconventional, it's never obscure". This film is exactly that, Godard made a timeless masterpiece in '63 and for any other fellow lover of French cinema, you'd be a fool to ignore it.
