Le Mepris [DVD] [1963]

"Le Mepris" is filmed exquisitely; its colours are vivid , the mood languid and pensive , the soundtrack haunting. Like in "Au Bout de Souffle", Godard's female lead is capricious and mysterious,beautiful but dangerous. She turns a minor display of indifference by her husband into a marital make or break ,much to his surprise. However as the film unravels ,we see that the harmony and tenderness of the couple in the opening scenes disguises fundamental shifts in the balance of their relationship. Piccoli has a sharper intellect and more ambition than Bardot and she feels he is leaving her behind, only her physical beauty appealing to him. She wants to bring things to a head, restore the marital equilibrium in some way ; Piccoli is merely bemused at her sudden coldness to him.

The viewer never quite knows whether the marital problems are down to Piccoli's insensitivity or Bardot's irrationality, in the same way as the subplot of the filming of the "Odyssey" leads to debate about whether either Odysseus or Penelope were secretly fed up with each other despite appearances to the contrary on the surface and who was most to blame.

An enjoyable film which has much to say about the fickleness of modern relationships and Bardot's portrayal of a selfish,cold bitch/ strong ,liberated woman (delete as appropriate) was ahead of its time by several decades.

Some shots are painfully long and much of the narrative is shot in real time, so you may find it a bit slow, boring and after the finality of the death of the central female protagonist, you might feel pretty depressed! however, because godard is so occupied with making you as an audience work hard to unravel what's going on in the minds of the central characters, you might like that it's refreshingly challenging. its the kind of film that makes you realise how commercial hollywood cinema (something godard demonstrably disapproves of in le mepris) has a tendancy to lull you into the story and dictates to you how to interpret scenes and characters.

for those of you who seriously adore french new wave cinema, this is by no means a film that's easy to review and i can't begin to communicate how relevant and innovative a film this is. there are so many intrinsically placed themes that run alongside the production of the odyssey, the death of cinema as an art form, the breakdown of a marriage, the misuse of love and morality, the parallels between reality and fantasy...quite simply the film is its own work of art.

The scene in question is in the bedroom between Piccoli and Bardot at the beginning of the film. It is likely they have just made love and Bardot (Camille) embarks on reassuring herself the love of her husband through a series of questions about her body. This portrayal of love gives us a feeling of heart-warming gratitude to Godard for delivering us from the fog of blockbuster, commercialised half-baked notions of love. This is, however, not the only way in which Godard strives to be different.

Let us look at lighting, music and camera. This tender scene is filmed with a strong red filter to enhance the impact of love. The hypnotising soundtrack dutifully plays over the images unfolding before us. The camera begins with a steady shot of the couple in bed. Nothing to write home about, I suppose. Except the red filter first changes to natural lighting, then to blue. When a piece from the soundtrack comes to an end, it does not coincide with the end of the scene as is usually the case, but rather the latter continues with all its intensity in silence. At other times the music becomes so loud we cannot hear the dialogue. The camera, having performed its common tasks of presenting the scene embarks on a close-up amble of Camille's nude body as if it had a mind of its own.

All the above techniques are deliberately engineered by Godard to make the spectator snap out of his passiveness. He is telling us to be independant, to react against being told how things are, in this case love. Incidentally, let us not forget that the physical love-making between Bardot and Piccoli is absent in this scene. Think about how hard a commercial movie will painfully try to film its obligatory love-scene in a constantly novel way to realise how significant this is.

Although nearly 40 years old now, Le Mepris remains and will remain fresh and inspiring for many years to come. The film is a necessary antidote to today's multiplexes and as relevant in the present cinematic climate to film-making in the 1960's.