Contempt (1963)
Related: 1963 - Jean-Luc Godard - 1954 - Alberto Moravia
Contempt (1954) - Alberto Moravia
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Definition
Contempt is an intense feeling of disrespect and dislike. It is related to feelings of resentment and bitterness. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt [Aug 2004]Contempt (1963) - Jean-Luc Godard
Contempt, also known as Le Mépris in its original French, is a film released in 1963, directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
It was based on Alberto Moravia's 1954 Italian-language novel Il disprezzo. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_%28film%29 [Aug 2005]
With his aptly titled Contempt, Jean-Luc Godard embraced the widescreen splendor of Hollywood while thumbing his nose at Hollywood itself. A rebel with a cause, Godard pursues an iconoclast's agenda, using the Franscope format (expertly controlled by cinematographer Raoul Coutard) to undermine the grandeur of widescreen melodramas. The story ostensibly concerns an innovative production of Homer's Odyssey and the struggle of a respected screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) to please a pugnacious producer (Jack Palance), a veteran director (Fritz Lang, essentially playing himself), and a petulant wife (Brigitte Bardot) who's grown tired of their turbulent relationship. It's all pretense, however, for Godard's mischievous (and yes, contemptuous) deconstruction of commercial Hollywood filmmaking, potently infused with film-buff in-jokes, astute observations about love, stardom, and artistry, and enough glossy style to suggest that Godard had mastered the craft he so willfully rejects. Contempt is one of his most accessibly fascinating films. --Jeff Shannon for Amazon.com
Il Disprezzo/Contempt (1954) - Alberto Moravia
Contempt (1954) - Alberto Moravia
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
In the 1950s Alberto Moravia abandoned the third-person narrative, and used the limited, non-objective first person narrative in tune with the modernist literature theories. Il Disprezzo (1954, A Ghost at Noon) was the basis of Jean-Luc Godard's film Le Mépris (1963), starring Brigitte Bardot. The director considered the novel "a nice, vulgar one for a train journey, full of classical, old fashioned sentiments in spite of the modernity of the situation. But it is with this kind of novel that one can often make the best films." Godard played with the theme of the book - the adapting of Homer's Odyssey to film - and developed further the triangle drama of Odysseus, Penelope, and Poseidon. --http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/moravia.htm [Oct 2004]
The New York Times
Rich in substance and resonant with meaning...a rare achievement.
Book Description
Contempt is a brilliant and unsettling work by one of the revolutionary masters of modern European literature. All the qualities for which Alberto Moravia is justly famous--his cool clarity of expression, his ex acting attention to psychological complexity and social pretension, his still-striki ng openness about sex--are evident in this story of a failing marriage. Contempt (wh ich was to inspire Jean-Luc Godard's no-less-celebrated film) is an unflinching exam ination of desperation and self-deception in the emotional vacuum of modern consumer society.
Molteni, the narrator, aspires to be a man of letters, but has taken a job as a screenwriter in order to support his beautiful wife, Emilia. Frustrated by his work, he becomes convinced that she no longer loves him--that in fact she despises him--and a s he relentlessly interrogates her about the true nature of her feelings, he makes h is deepest fear (or secret desire) come true.
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