CONTEMPT
(LE MÉPRIS)

Tuesday, October 11 – Truffaut Theatre – 1 pm
(Screening ends at 2:45 pm)

FICTION / DRAMA
CLASSIC SERIES

Presented in Association with:
Rialto Pictures

Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard
Written by: Jean-Luc Godard, Alberto Moravia
Based on a novel by: Alberto Moravia
Produced by: Carlo Ponti, Georges de Beauregard, Joseph Levine
Cinematography: Raoul Coutard
Film Editing: Agnès Guillemot
Original Score: George Delerue, Piero Piccioni
Cast: Brigitte Bardot (Camille Javal), Michel Piccoli (Paul Javal), Fritz Lang (Fritz Lang), Jack Palance (Jeremy Prokosch), Giorgia Moll (Francesca Vanini), Jean-Luc Godard (Fritz Lang’s assistant)
U.S. Distributor: Rialto Pictures

Based on Alberto Moravia’s 1954 novel A Ghost at Noon, Contempt is Jean-Luc Godard’s rare detour into commercial filmmaking. Initiated at the behest of Italian producer Carlo Ponti, the star-studded Cinemascope extravaganza stars Michel Piccoli as a screenwriter torn between the demands of his German director (played by the legendary Fritz Lang), his boorish American producer (Jack Palance), and his exploited wife (Brigitte Bardot), as he attempts to patch together the script for a film adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. Filmed on location at the iconic Cinecittà film studios and the spectacular Villa Malaparte in Capri, and boasting lush cinematography by Raoul Coutard and Brigitte Bardot at her most glorious, Contempt is an astute study of conjugal disintegration, artistic compromise and a somewhat cynical look at the film industry itself. The film is widely acknowledged to be Godard’s great masterpiece.

Leading light of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard almost single-handedly rewrote the grammar of modern cinema with his 1960 first feature, Breathless, and is considered to be the most influential French filmmaker of the post-war era. The Swiss-born writer/director began his career as a film critic for the influential Cahiers du Cinéma magazine in 1952. A great scholar of world cinema and an avid student of existential and Marxist philosophy, his films are filled with references to film history, and have often expressed his highly political views. His immense body of work (of 131 films) includes My Life to Live (1962); Band of Outsiders (1964); Alphaville (1965), which won the Golden Bear in Berlin; Pierrot le Fou (1965); Masculin Féminin (1966); Weekend (1967); Tout va bien (1972); First Name: Carmen (1983), which won the Golden Lion in Venice; Hail Mary (1985); King Lear (1987); Detective (1985); the comprehensive Histoire(s) du cinéma miniseries (1989-99), which won an Honorary César Award; JLG/JLG (1994); In Praise of Love (2001); Film socialisme (2010), which won the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Association’s Independent/Experimental Film Award; Goodbye to Language (2014), which nabbed a Cannes Jury Prize; and The Image Book (2018), which was awarded a Special Palme d’Or in Cannes. Godard has been honored with lifetime achievement awards from the César Awards, the European Film Awards, the Locarno Film Festival, the Montréal World Film Festival, the National Society of Film Critics in the U.S., the New York Film Critics’ Circle, the Stockholm Film Festival, and the Venice Film Festival. A 2002 Sight & Sound poll ranked Godard as number three in the critics’ top ten directors of all time, and he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 2011 “For passion. For confrontation. For a new kind of cinema.” Jean-Luc Godard passed away, at the age of 91, on September 13, 2022.

CONTEMPT (LE MÉPRIS)

CONTEMPT
(LE MÉPRIS)