Le Mépris movie storyline. On Capri, an Italian crew makes a German film of Homer’s “Odyssey”; Fritz Lang directs with American money. Jeremy Prokosch, the producer, with his sneer and his red Alfa Romeo, holds art films in contempt and hires writer Javal to help Lang commercialize the picture. Against this backdrop, we watch the breakup of Javal’s marriage to Camille, a young former typist.
It opens with the couple talking in bed, she asking for assurance that he finds her attractive. Later that day, he introduces her to Prokosch and, unawares, blunders unforgivably. The rest of the film portrays her, in their apartment and in public, expressing her hurt and change of heart and his slow grasp of the source of her contempt.
Le Mépris (English: Contempt) is a 1963 French New Wave drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, based on the 1954 Italian novel Il disprezzo (A Ghost at Noon) by Alberto Moravia. It stars Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, and Giorgia Moll.
Contempt was filmed in Italy where it is set, with location shooting at the Cinecittà studios in Rome and the Casa Malaparte on Capri island. In a sequence, the characters played by Piccoli and Bardot wander through their apartment alternately arguing and reconciling. Godard filmed the scene as an extended series of tracking shots, in natural light and in near real-time. The cinematographer Raoul Coutard shot some of the other nouvelle vague films, including Godard’s Breathless (1960).
According to Jonathan Rosenbaum, Godard was also directly influenced by Jean-Daniel Pollet and Volker Schlöndorff’s Méditerranée, released earlier the same year. Godard admitted his tendency to get actors to improvise dialogue “during the peak moment of creation” often baffled them. “They often feel useless,” he said. “Yet they bring me a lot… I need them, just as I need the pulse and colours of real settings for atmosphere and creation.”
Le Mépris (1963)
Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard
Starring: Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Giorgia Moll, Fritz Lang, Raoul Coutard, Jean-Luc Godard, Linda Veras
Screenplay by: Jean-Luc Godard
Production Design by:
Cinematography by: Raoul Coutard
Film Editing by: Agnès Guillemot, Lila Lakshmanan
Costume Design by:
Set Decoration by:
Art Direction by:
Music by: Georges Delerue, Piero Piccioni
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Marceau-Cocinor (France), Interfilm (Italy)
Release Date: October 29, 1963 (Italy), December 20, 1963 (France)
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