Contempt

One of Jean-Luc Godard’s greatest and most visually ravishing films follows a French screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) who signs on to write a film adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey for a crude and arrogant American producer (Jack Palance), to be directed by a legendary German director (Fritz Lang, playing himself) on the Italian isle of Capri. But with every concession and deferral the screenwriter makes to the overbearing American, his restless wife (Brigitte Bardot) loses a little more respect for him, in this dazzling study of marital breakdown, artistic compromise and the cinematic process. Cinematographer Raoul Coutard’s gorgeously colorful widescreen lensing on location at Rome’s famed Cinecitta studios and Casa Malaparte on the isle of Capri make the French New Wave classic Contempt one of the most visually distinctive films of the ‘60s. “Brilliant, romantic and genuinely tragic, Contempt is also one of the greatest films ever made about the actual process of moviemaking.” – Martin Scorsese. (Dir. by Jean-Luc Godard, 1963, France, in English/French/German/Italian with English subtitles, 103 mins., Not Rated)