Thoughts on Contempt
-Michel Piccoli stars as a French novelist, hired by American film producer Jack Palance to revise the script for an adaption of the Odyssey, dissatisfied with Fritz Lang's approach (yes, really). The conflict between art and commercialism is mirrored by Piccoli's sudden estrangement from his wife Brigitte Bardot.-Here's what I don't get. I don't care where you're from, how big of a dumbass you are, or how much unearned money you got. When Fritz Lang hands you a movie, you shut up and take the damn movie.
-And...it doesn't really feel like a Godard movie. Aside from some experimentation with film lenses, and the second act, which is a marital spat that roams through one apartment, it's mostly...I don't know. Maybe because it's his first studio film.
-I can't say that this is Bardot's best performance, because I haven't seen her other ones, but I can say it's very, very good. Both she and Godard seek to seperate her from blonde bombshell reputation, giving off the sense that she, as both a character and as an actress, is deeply resentful (of her husband, of the audience) for not taking her seriously as more than a pretty face. She spends a quarter of the film in a Karina wig, anyway.
-Uh...go consult this thing I wrote a couple weeks ago about the American producer's jackassery. If you want. I also talk about the characters a bit more, at least, with as much effort as I can ever be bothered to put into these things (as you may or may not know, I tend to write these things while watching TV, and this doesn't make for terribly deep dissertations).
-Oh, poor Giorgia Moll.
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