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208.58.2.83
And Godard's first film in color. I saw it at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, where long ago I had once attended my first "foreign movie" (Wild Strawberries).We have Jack Palance (in the Alec Baldwin role, and a far sperior actor), Brigitte Bardot (a petulant, high-maintenance wife) and Fritz Lang (as himself and the Greek chorus) -- a motley crew indeed. The unknown-to-me Michel Piccoli is the protagonist (a reluctant screenwriter) and a superb method/improvisational actor, believable in every line he utters.
There is a Criterion edition of this and I hope it's in better shape that the "new 35mm print" offered for viewing at the Brattle. Plus the sound was screechy in the digital way, although the staff claimed it was an optical track. On the other hand they also thought it was in stereo!
The film is more-or-less a ruse, a meta-commentary on its own action, not unlike Truffaut's "Day for Night" (La Nuit américaine). The opening shot, just for instance, shows us a camera making a tracking shot of a walking actress, and at the end it turns full on us. And on the screen appears this quotation (?), as best I can recall it: "The purpose of cinema is to divert our regular gaze and redirect it through the window of our desires." Whew!
The first half hour is filmed in a movie studio (well of course it is!), but the buildings and grounds of Rome's Cinecitta act as another player here. The rest of the film is set in the two estates of the Hollywood producer played with exquisitely boorish tone (and in English) by Jack Palance -- one house in Rome, the other in Capri. The central and defining scene takes place between Paul and Penelope (Piccoli and Bardot) in a cramped apartment; for twenty minutes in the French manner she wants to talk about what love means and he, I have to say, seems a la Antonioni equally interested in the conversation.
But is the talk serious, or meta-serious? (Again, in the Italo/French manner.)
A word on Cambridge cinema audiences, of whom there were a heartening couple hundred at the early Sunday matinee: They are an earnest group. I caught on before anyone that we were watching a comedy and began chuckling, then laughing. Were people staring at me? Eventually however they got the clue, but when the scene referenced above began they were still laughing, because love is funny too, right? But again I caught on to the change of tone and adjusted my reaction, and soon they calmed down too.
The rest was a tossup whether comedy or drama. A fine balancing act.
A word on Cinemascope (actually "Franscope"). Early on, the director of the film-within-a-film ("The Unhappiness of Hercules"), Fritz Lang, avers that he hates widescreen, it's only good for showing rivers and mountain ranges, and he wouldn't be using it here if his Hollywood bosses hadn't made him. Très amusant, yes? But then... then!... Godard proceeds to offer us some of the most ravishing Cinemascope photography you'll ever see. For instance, Bardot's body. The Isle of Capri. And then... then!... he fields some vertical compositions that occupy only the center of the screen, in the old 4:3 frame, but the wings... the wings!... outside that array are crammed with color.
A word on the color: Color by Technicolor. Several of the cameramen whom we see are wearing that logo on their jackets. Très amusant, yes?
Lang alone seems truly interested in the film they're making. But, "It's a fight against the gods," he sagely observes.
And the last shot in this director-detested widescreen production? A pan from Hercules standing on the ramparts to a river emptying into the wide blue sea.
clark
Edits: 04/14/08Follow Ups:
that took me to a new level in my exploration of cinema and my pursuit of Criterion releases.
I didn't see BB as petulant and high-maintenance. It seemed like it should have (or at least could have) been fairly easy (or at least simple) for her hubby to keep her happy. A little more communication (and acknowledgment of her) on his part and he'd have had a happy wife but then there would have been no story.
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
...hung in there when she was playing Baby Doll. "Do you like my legs?" "Do you like my nose?" "Do you like my elbows?" "Do you like my nails?" AAAARRRRGH!
High maintenance. I rest my case.
clark
out that he wasn't really seeing HER.
So she was mocking what he does see about her and turning it back on him.
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
...you can't trust what any of the characters are saying or doing, as the director's matrix of meaning is superimposed on every movement and moment. "Civility is deliberately, intelligently perverted before our eyes, by the story, the players and the director, yet we go along with it all because the perverse truths revealed are so familiar."
clark
it doesn't stop you from feeling that she was petulant and high maintenance and it doesn't stop me from believing that she was simply trying to teach him a lesson about not objectifying her (which could be a double lesson... to the fictional husband and the real life producer who wanted her in the film and wanted her to show some skin).
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
x
Godard was one of the founder members, very chic VERY intelligent, and of course mostly very left, and if not, Catholic...
" Mieux vaut une tête bien faite qu'une tête bien pleine."
I am not a huge fan of his, but am attempting to see all his films anyway because they do have a lot to offer. Just saw Contempt for the second time recently, and I have to say this is my favorite of all his films by quite a margin.
Rod
Great film; nice reading.
I've had precisely the same impression re the Antonioni feel of it.
x
You note the humor. Yes.
The film is always pressing the borders of the absurd. Abuse, emotional and otherwise, is a vehicle for parody, for the surreal. Irony is a relief. Everything is over the top, dramatically, perfectly contained, normalized.
Civility is deliberately, intelligently perverted before our eyes, by the story, the players and the director, yet we go along with it all because the perverse truths revealed are so familiar. There's security in the known, regardless the pain. What a cast!
Very life-affirming, this film. Art of a high order.
I'm reminded of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolfe when I see Contempt.
Speaking of Antonioni, have you seen Il Grido? Highly recommended.
a
the Malaparte house in Capri was the object of many scenes, and is widely considered the most beatiful house in the world. Also the opening shots of Bardot were added at the insistence of the American producer Levine, whom is parodied throughout the course of the film. Hence, in a sense, it is a film within a film within a film.
x
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