Carlo Ponti and Joseph E. Levine, the producers of Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt", were eager to make a commercial film that would appeal to a broad audience, while simultaneously exploiting their "edgy" young director's notoriety. They were interested in a "product" that would sell both in art-houses and in shopping malls. Godard resisted them every step of the way and turned the film itself into a brilliant satire on Hollywood stupidity and greed, including the bottom-line mentality of his producers. "Contempt" is about the making of a new version of Homer's Odyssey. A crude and venal American producer named Jerry Prokosch (Jack Palance) has arrived in Rome to assemble a crew that can realize his new vision of the epic. While the director Fritz Lang--played brilliantly by himself--wants to film ancient Greek sculptures of the gods to accompany the action, Prokosch dictates that there should be nude mermaids instead. Joseph E. Levine himself had achieved some success in Hollywood making trashy versions of Greek and Roman myths. These inevitably featured body-builders playing gods and heroes, scantily dressed actresses and the most ridiculous sorts of plots. The analogy between Prokosch's vision of the Odyssey and the producer's prior efforts could not have been lost on Levine. Tensions ran high on the set of "Contempt", according to press reports of the time. Prokosch hires a young novelist and Communist Party member Paul Javel (Michel Piccoli) to crank out a screenplay that would cater to popular tastes. Javel is only too happy to please the Hollywood producer who can pay him the money he needs to finish the work on his new apartment. In the opening scenes of the film we observe Paul making love to his wife Camille played by Bridgette Bardot in their bedroom. She asks him "Do you think my feet are beautiful?" and the camera pans in on her feet. As she repeats the question about her thighs, breasts and buttocks, the camera dutifully and clinically pans in on each body part. The scene is studiously anti-erotic. Just as Prokosch instructed Lang to include plenty of nude mermaids, Levine and Ponti had urged Godard to show the sex-goddess Bardot unclothed. It was good for the box-office they told him. Godard, ever the rebel, gave them the nudity they wanted but made it so antiseptic as to subvert their intentions. In a long scene that constitutes the entire middle section of the film, Paul and Camille have a marital squabble that leads to their separation. Paul believes that sexual jealousy has sparked the fight. In the preceding scene, Prokosch has made a play for Camille while she has caught him in the act of fondling Prokosch's beautiful young assistant. But it is not sexual jealousy that is the cause of their estrangement. It is rather her loss of respect for him as an artist. The film gives Godard plenty of opportunity to take knocks at the Carlo Pontis and Joseph E. Levines of the world. Prokosch tells his screen-writer Paul and his director Fritz Lang that "Whenever I hear the word 'culture,', I reach for my checkbook." This is an allusion to Nazi culture minister Joseph Goebbels' famous remark about hearing the word "culture" and reaching for his gun. The background to this is interesting since Joseph Goebbels offered Lang the job of supervising German film production in 1933. He responded by fleeing into exile--a choice (and true story) that Godard relates in the film. For Godard, the comparison between Hollywood and Nazi Germany is of real significance. In 1963, when the film was made, the United States had not only achieved global economic and military dominance, it also had begun to enforce its cultural standards on the rest of the world as well. Godard had become disillusioned by the crisis facing both the American and European film industries. The American studio system was collapsing and could no longer support the creative vision of "auteurs" like John Ford or Howard Hawks who had strongly influenced French "nouvelle vague" criticism and film-making. Godard's had a love-hate relationship for American popular culture. Although he clearly despised the sort of commercialism that Joseph E. Levine represented, there were continual reminders of his affection for its icons. Paul Javel wears a fedora and smokes cigarettes during the entire film, even while bathing, because as he tells his wife, he wants to look like Dean Martin in "Some Came Running". Godard even considered casting Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak in the roles of Paul and Camille at one point. His hatred was toward the moguls in Hollywood, not working professionals like himself. "Contempt", above all, is a film about irony. The irony of a Communist screen-writer turning out commercial schlock. The irony of his sex kitten wife Camille rejecting him for his failure as an artist rather than as a lover. Perhaps the least ironic figure in the film is Fritz Lang himself who Godard had a deep respect for. The fact that Lang's heroic period as a director was of the 1920s and 1930s did not diminish his stature in Godard's eyes. But Godard could not completely block out what had happened to Lang, even in his own film: "It's always a bit sad when I see Lang in the film. He was touched that the young filmmakers admired him, but it was mostly because he needed money that he accepted." This sense of disillusionment, of betrayed hopes, of contempt for oneself for being part of the capitalist nexus is distinctly modern. Godard, more than any film-maker, introduced this mood into the culture of the 1960s. He influenced a wide range of artists, from the sublime (Martin Scorsese comes to mind--he is responsible for the release of this film to the public for the first time in 30 years) to the ridiculous (Quentin Tarentino). The optimistic and socially-minded films of the 1930 and 40s were no longer possible since there was no historical agency capable of being the protagonist. The "Grapes of Wrath" could no longer be made. By the same token, the bitter "noir" films of the 1950s had run their course as well. Their anti-heroes--gangsters, drifters, cheats--were no longer relevant since the urban setting that provided their milieu had begun to disappear. Gone were the lonely hotel rooms looking out at blinking neon lights. They were replaced by sun-drenched suburban tracts and swimming-pools. Godard's film is a masterpiece. Currently it is being shown at the Film Forum in New York City, but there is every likelihood that it will appear on the art theater circuit. It is not to be missed. Louis Proyect
