The Jean-Luc Godard film Contempt was on TCM today, and it’s
certainly an interesting movie, if you know the events behind its production.
Friends of mine watched it recently and complained that it was really boring,
and I can see how someone might think so, if you don’t know the events behind
its production (unless you’re a real French New Wave behind-the-scenes
production buff). But once you know the backstory, it’s really quite
fascinating.
So here’s what I heard from a film teacher of mine years ago who was
a big French New Wave film buff living in Europe when this movie was being made
and released, and this was what he was hearing at the time (BTW: I haven’t read
this anywhere else, so I’m just taking it on faith that this is accurate.):
Jean-Luc Godard was a very hot commodity in the early Sixties, after
a number of groundbreaking New Wave films he made, so naturally, this attracted
the attention of film producers looking for the next big thing. So a reportedly
sort of gauche American producer, Joseph E. Levine, approached Godard to make a
movie for him, which he wanted to be a sexed-up version of The Odyssey,
with nude scenes requested of major French film sex kitten Brigitte Bardot. And
reportedly Levine offered Godard so much money, and creative freedom, he
couldn’t really turn it down; but he felt like a sellout taking the deal, so
what he did was this: He followed the letter of the requests from Levine
regarding the content of the movie, but what he made was something completely
different. So rather than being a sexed-up action movie based on The Odyssey,
it was a movie about an artistic and idealistic writer who accepts a deal from
a gauche American producer to write a movie about The Odyssey, and in
doing so, he feels like a whore and a sellout, and so to get the producer off
his back with extra soul-killing requests, he asks his wife to “distract” the
producer, leading to the dissolution of their marriage. And the nude scenes of
Brigitte Bardot are of her in bed with her husband the writer, and they’re just
making empty-headed pillow talk, rather than “gettin’ it on”. So in effect, the
movie was a depiction of the actual situation of the setup and production of
the film, told in a manner that’s extremely unflattering vis-à-vis the producer
and the film industry in general.
Now, for all I know, this could be inaccurate; but this is what I
was told in a film class by a very knowledgeable and cinema-fanatical film
professor. And if it’s not actually true, I think it sounds a lot more
interesting than what the truth really is. Because if this story isn’t true,
then Godard was just hired to make this movie with this story, and then he was
just asked to add some sex scenes, and that’s kind of routine. But in this
story I have related above, Godard would have completely subverted the
expectation of the producer and made and delivered not a programmer movie, but
rather, a scathing critique of the film business that savages the intellect and
culture of the producer and the industry as a whole. And that’s the kind of
thing that’s really fun to see artists do: speak truth to power with an astute
critical eye and without fear of consequence.
And so the Contempt of the title seems to refer not only to
the contempt between the husband and wife, but also between many characters,
and felt by the director towards the producer of this film, the film within the
film, and the power structure of the film industry in general. And that adds
lots of extra significance to the film which makes the story and its characters
resonate in an even greater capacity than they do within the context of the
film itself. And so I’d like to think this story is true.
