Contempt |
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Le Mepris 1963 - France Director Starring |
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This took me a while to warm up to. Halfway through the film I was thinking, ‘I’m invested because of the score and the staging — that’s about it.’ The second half completely drew me in — it seemed every time the simple musical theme would swell to accentuate the scene preceeding it, I loved the film a bit more. A two-hour crescendo to a delightfully staged anticlimax.
I’m growing to really love Godard. My first was Breathless – nearly three years ago, possibly my first FNW film, and among my first ‘old’ and foreign-language films. His technique didn’t work for me at all then. The jump cuts took me out of the film, I complained. Well, yeah. Since, I’ve acquired a taste for reflexivity in art, and Godard’s the master as far as that’s concerned. Contempt may err on the side of over-calculating and over-intellectualizing, but I’ll still call it a superlative examination of art v. life, communication and understanding, self-determination &c…
1963-wise and movie-about-movies-wise it is not 8 1/2’s equal, but second place in either respect is still quite something. Also my runner-up among Godard’s work so far, after Vivre sa vie.
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[...] I doubt if I can address this film in my usual style. The best films — as the best emotional experiences, which of course encompasses the best films — are felt viscerally: this dead weight in the bottom of my stomach, this being wracked with chills, this inability to quite just get on with my day. It is actually a simple film, so what is there to write about. Longing, bereavement, miscommunication, terror, lust, and being utterly thrashed to death by love. These characters, deeply inhabited by these actors (and I agree with Tuco, the performances are astonishing; I agree with Romy herself, this is probably her best work), are not content to merely say “I love,” and find the active verb “to love” counter to mere survival. Georges Delerue has done this to me, too; his score is as haunting as that of Contempt. And while I have a vague fear I’ve already seen the two Zulawski’s I’m most apt to love (this and My Nights), I can’t wait to tear into the rest of his filmography. [...]
Pingback by The Life Cinematic » That Most Important Thing: Love — 2 January 2008 @ 2 January 2008[...] 1967 Week End 1966 Masculin féminin: 15 faits précis 1965 Alphaville 1964 Band of Outsiders 1963 Contempt 1963 Le Petit soldat 1962 Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux 1961 A Woman is a Woman 1959 Breathless Top Tens [...]
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