Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

So much average

good back-story, and good acting

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

From director Jean-Luc Godard (À Bout De Soufflé (Breathless), Alphaville, Pierrot Le Fou), featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die this French/Italian film had an average rating by critics, but the cast certainly appealed to me, I was going to watch no matter what anyway. Basically respected Austrian director Fritz Lang (Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, Metropolis) has been hired by American film producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) to direct a film adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, but the script needs a lot of work, so novelist and playwright Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli) is hired to rework the script, as Prokosch is not satisfied with Lang's treatment of the material as an art film. With the conflicts of artistic expression and commercial opportunity are going on Paul is becoming estranged from his wife Camille Javal (Brigitte Bardot), and after being left alone with millionaire playboy Prokosch they may be developing intimate feelings for each other. The story seems to parallel with aspects of director Godard's own life, but the main point as far as I can tell is that there are dodgy or greedy dealings of money during the film production, and it eventually ends with contempt and the marriage of Camille and Paul destroyed. Also starring Giorgia Moll as Francesca Vanini. I will be absolutely honest and say that this film is rather hard to follow, I understand it works well as an insight into the events you get on a film set with some mockery thrown in, and I found Bardot, clothed and unclothed, fascinating to watch, but the little story is confusing, the switch between spoken languages adds to the confusion, what I could keep up with though was relatively interesting, so I suppose it's not a completely wasted satire. Worth watching!

Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt is a beautiful film visually and an ugly film thematically, depicting the disintegration of a marriage. One wonders how Godard, who had just married the ravishing Anna Karina the same year Contempt was released, managed to write a film so pessimistic about the union of marriage and how it corrupts both parties mentally.The eye-popping color scheme of Contempt, thanks to Raoul Coutard's predictably wonderful cinematography as well as CinemaScope, a specific kind of anamorphic lens for widescreen shooting, is one of the defining reasons for this film's greatness. The process of CinemaScope enhances the color extraordinarily, adding a new layer of vivid texture to the film and a spot-on visual scheme throughout the film. Ordinary things like walking along the beach, admiring the ocean, or just simple conversations staged inside unremarkable buildings become a feast for the eyes simply because Godard uses this delightful method of shooting.But what a way to use the film's visual scheme to contrast it with its overall bleak tone. The film revolves around an American film producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) who decides to adapt Homer's renowned and iconic piece Odyssey for the big screen. He hires famed director Fritz Lang, who treats the film as if it were an artistic indie film and not the epic he had envisioned. Prokosch decides to hire Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli), a writer and playwright, trusting him to handle Homer's work with the respect he knows it deserves.Paul, however, begins to feel increased pressure with adapting this work, as well as opposition in line of his own personal artistic expression as well as studio interest. To add to his already filling plate, Paul's marriage to the incredibly beautiful Camille (Brigitte Bardot) is on the rockiest of waters with persistent fights occurring between the two as well as Camille's hot and cold attitude towards him and their marriage.Godard's Contempt is a multilayered piece of work to say the least. The film can be taken as a surface examination of a marriage in total jeopardy, and perhaps a depiction of the death of a practical union between two impractical people, or simply seen as an on-screen showcase for the issues and opposition Godard faced when he began making films on his own in the 1960's. I've already established that Godard is a rebel filmmaker in every regard; he consciously set out to fight against typical French filmmaking conventions and, in turn, pushed French cinema through an unthinkable New Wave movement, redefining cinematic aesthetics, tampering with narrative convention, and even adding deeper morals and themes provided with new visionary techniques and darker tones to films.He puts his talents and his desire to destroy and construct to use with Contempt and, in turn, makes a fascinating film. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus on the film states that it is "essential cinema" and blends the ideas of "meta" and "physique," a statement I couldn't agree more with. Godard has always been big on abstraction with film to, at times, treading the line of being inaccessible in what he's trying to say. The best way that I've heard his work put, by a colleague, is that his films "are like having an intellectual conversation." So many ideas are getting tossed around, most of his films lack central ideas (one thing I've been known to critique with his films), and some I find to be next to impossible in trying to extract even some meaning out.Contempt is definitely abstract and lives up the description of "meta;" various scenes leave a viewer confused and questioning what they were supposed to take away from a certain part. However, the overarching theme of the decline of marriage and artistic creativity remains accessible and digestible through the abstraction. Just by the inclusion of Fritz Lang, one of Godard's biggest cinematic influences, we can evidently see that Godard is commenting about how warped studios become in money, profits, and the meticulous "Hollywood/film accounting" process that they forget about the visionaries, the film stylists, and those who have original ideas that desperately need to find ways out in the public. Cinema had to inherently be discovered by rebels, illusionists, and subversive artists, and these are the same people that are finding the film industry a harder and harder place to break out, let alone work. Through Paul Javal, Godard details this struggle beautifully.As stated, the film's style - or "physique" - is dashing in every regard. When one sees stills from the film taken out of context, one can easily infer Contempt to be a film masquerading in a more positive light than it actually is. However, make no mistake, as Contempt deals with the disintegration of a marriage in its darkest form. If capturing how difficult it was to make a film when you're barricaded by philistines wasn't subversive enough, Godard dares enter the realm of showing how marriage itself is a practical union between two people but people themselves aren't always practical. Look at the character of Camille, who seems to play psychological mind-games with her husband, never really solving anything and just getting him to dance around a whirlwind of mixed singles and unidentified irritations she seems to form overnight.After watching what I deem Godard's "happiest" film so far, his sophomore effort A Woman is a Woman, entering into Contempt's world was a rough wakeup call. Godard is one of the moodiest filmmakers I have yet to discover. I'd love to catch him on a good day, but he's so much more thought-provoking, alive, and blustering when he's angry.Starring: Michel Piccoli, Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance, and Fritz Lang. Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard.

Jeremy is such an alpha-male, big-time movie producer that he'll poach another man's wife right from under him. Camille is pretty, and has a great body, and likes the attention. Her passive husband Paul is a writer but seems clueless about human nature. These three dim souls are our focus in this film, which is beautiful to watch, but intensely self-serious and nihilistic. The scenes of Capri are stunning. Against this dazzling backdrop, self-involved humans play out their dramas as they have since the days of Homer...Maybe what Godard was trying to tell us is that life is vanity. Despite all the sturm und drang amidst husbands, wives, and their lovers, it's all just a lot of blather in the end -- then everyone dies. Goddard also seems to be saying that he really likes Bardot's impeccably shaped derrière. So much for high art!

I hate Godard. I think that he's cold and pretentious and relies too often on technique and shock value to see his films through. Sometimes this works out well. Sometimes it doesn't. I am probably the only cinephile on the planet to think that Breathless was a steaming pile of crap, although I found both Alphaville and Masculin Feminin satisfyingly artistic and absurd. This one isn't bad either, and, apparently, unlike Godard's contemporaries, I found that Cinemascope suits his style very well. If this is selling out, I'm all for it.I was quite pleased to see Brigitte Bardot as I've always enjoyed her work. Other points of interest include the long panoramic shots of the Capri landscape and that really lovely string movement which kicks in about the same time. I'm not much of a fan of Jack Palance, but I was impressed that he was able to portray such a thoroughly unlikeable character so well. Fritz Lang was mildly annoying as the put-upon film director, and his character seem to exist solely of advancing the entirely wrongheaded notion that the director is the true and only auteur, and producers and writers and script-girls and cinematographers are all roadblocks between the director and his Art.One reviewer mentioned that this film is "difficult". It is not difficult. Good films shouldn't be difficult, they should be enjoyable. Symbolism, and imagery in particular, should exist to facilitate understanding of the themes, not to merely propel the work into highbrow territory. I found the symbolism in this film to be both clear and effective, and was therefore never confused. This is art film done right.