111 - Contempt, 1963, France/Italy. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.

Friday, April 21, 2017

111 - Contempt, 1963, France/Italy. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.

How can you not understand something so simple?

Camille is asking her husband Paul.

Paul is a screenwriter, and he has been hired to work on an international production of The Odyssey.

The Odyssey is about Odysseus' return home from the Trojan War.  The Greeks have won, and now he must return home.

When you hear the name Ulysses, you are hearing a reference to the same man.  He is called Odysseus in Greek.  He is called Ulysses in Latin.

He loves his wife, Penelope, and while he has been gone she has been faithful to him.  Despite the many suitors who have tried to break her will.

After many adventures he arrives home.  War has changed his appearance, and they do not recognize him.  Penelope asks him a question to prove that he is Odysseus, a question that only her husband could answer.  What is the construction of their bed?  He answers.  He defeats the suitors.  Man and wife are united.  Their marriage continues.  They love one another.  They end happily.

American producer Jeremy Prokosch, played by Jack Palance, is in charge of production.

German director and legend Fritz Lang, playing himself, is directing.

French writer Paul Javal, played by Michel Piccoli, is writing the script.  Or trying to.

Camille, played by Brigitte Bardot, is his wife and is trying to encourage and support him.

Francesca Vanini, played by Giorgia Moll, is there to translate for everyone.

They are filming in Italy.  On location and at the famous Cinecitta Studios.

Prokosch wants to add nudity to the movie to make it exciting.  He is the producer.  He wants to make money.

Lang wants to film the story as written.  He wants to tell the story of The Odyssey.  He does understand something so simple.  The love and fidelity of a warrior and his wife.  It will move people.  It will be artistic.  It will make money.

He has already filmed segments that Prokosch hates.  They are too artistic for Prokosch.  But they are from the script.  Lang filmed exactly what was written.

Paul wants to modernize the story, make it about Odysseus' neuroses.  Make it psychological.  Make it complicated.  Maybe he stayed away at war on purpose.  Maybe he was delaying coming home to his shrewish wife.

Screenwriters, here is some advice: do not tell your wife that you want to rewrite one of the most famous classic love stories in this way--where instead of simply loving each other they really have all this hidden baggage.  It might seem a little too close to home.

Paul does three things that make Camille question him.

He arrives late for their first meeting, giving the producer Prokosch time alone with Camille, to flirt with her.  Is he using his wife as a bargaining chip in negotiations?  She wonders.

He spends a moment alone with Francesca, the translator.  They talk.  He smacks her on the bottom when she leaves.  Camille sees it.

He stays on the boat, where they are filming, when Prokosch goes with Camille back to the house.  This will give Prokosch an opportunity to kiss Camille.

You can see the look in Camille's eyes.  She wants her husband to love her, to fight for her, to be a little more jealous and protective.  She wants him to stand up for their marriage.

And to make the movie.

You can also see the look in Paul's eyes.  In those moments just described, he is content.  He feels secure.  When he leaves Camille with Prokosch, for him it is an expression of trust.  He is happily doing his work.  He does not expect that anything will go wrong.

As for the moment with Francesca, it is possible it means nothing to him.  Other than seeming concerned about her sadness, and asking her how she is doing when they all meet at a theater to see a singer, Paul never pursues Francesca during the movie.

But Paul goes up into his head and complicates things.  He wonders if he should quit the film and go back to the theater.  Camille says she likes the flat where they are staying and wants to stay.  So he says he will stay on the movie for her.

But he will not stop overthinking it--both the script and their marriage.  She says she loves him.  He questions it.  They have an argument, a long argument, a long scene in the flat that evokes the underbubbling of those rocky moments in a marriage when things could go either way.

She gives him opportunities to come out of it.  She is willing to drop it all and go back to one.  She cheers up and says, "I love you," and tries to move on.  But he belabors the point.  If he could just FIGURE IT OUT.  She wishes he would stop trying to figure it out and just love her and just write the movie.

Meanwhile, Fritz Lang is the hero.  The one person in the movie who shows up and does his job without neurotic posturing and without drama.  He shows up.  He does the work.  End of story.

When Paul asks him in the end, "What are you going to do?" he answers, "Finish this movie.  Always finish what you start."

Always finish what you start.

The advice of an older generation.  Wisdom.

Contempt is Jean-Luc Godard's fourth full feature film, and it is considered a classic.

Filmed in Italy--in Rome and on the beautiful Isle of Capri--with a big budget and in Technicolor, it shows the potential of what Jean-Luc could have been as a director.

The film is a meditation on the tension between art and commerce, but it takes too cynical a view, and it reveals the burgeoning bitterness with which Godard would work for the rest of his career.

The American producer Prokosch is not portrayed as a real human being but as a stereotype, and he is treated with contempt by the director, by Godard.

Is this a great film?  For sure.

The portrayal of Paul and Camille's marriage and its decline is portrayed with nuance and honesty--undoubtedly assisted by the source material in the novel on which it is based, and by the quality of Piccoli's and Bardot's acting, both of whom turn in thoughtful and authentic performances.

But it also begins to employ the fakery to which Godard would later commit himself and for which he would become known.

There is a car crash.  And its aftermath looks as phony as if staged in a high school play.  And Godard does that on purpose.  And celebrates it.

Earlier Lang explains to Paul that Odysseus is not a modern neurotic.  He is a simple, robust man of action.  He loves his wife.  He returns to his wife.

Just write that and film that.

The public is not always dumber than the director.  Sometimes they are smarter.  Sometimes they understand art better than the director does.

Sometimes the amount of money a movie makes is not due to its being less artistic and more "mainstream," but due to its being less self-indulgent and more artistically elegant.

Hey, Godard!  How can you not understand something so simple?

So it is ironic that the final scene of the film shows Fritz Lang, our hero, doing his job, finishing his film, filming The Odyssey, as the camera pans out to sea.

And the first AD, played by Godard himself, speaks one word in Italian.

When we get to David Lynch's Mulholland Dr., we will see how Lynch ends his film with this one Italian word.

Here it means, "Quiet on the set."

But here it means so much more.

Silencio.