“men are more moral than they think, and much more immoral than they can imagine.” – sigmund freud

excerpts from cineaction and beautiful write-up by george porcari:  “…in the 1960’s jean-luc godard was shifting genres with what seemed like effortless bravado often mimicking the work of different directors. by 1964 it was clear that he had the various film genres – established primarily in hollywood over the previous half century – in his pocket and he made extensive use of them in a quick succession of masterworks throughout the 1960’s that has no equal in film history. godard’s films from the 1960’s comprise 25 features and 8 shorts. while other directors covered a lot of ground in terms of genres – one need only think of howard hawks’ filmography – they never did so in such an intensely concentrated and productive period using the same group of actors and technicians to help them realize that body of work.

godard’s characters in his films from the 1960’s, including le mepris (contempt, 1964) often find that they are in “the wrong film.” this is a typical godardian strategy of displacement – often accomplished with tongue planted firmly in cheek. one thinks of lemmy caution in alphaville, who is the proverbial tough guy detective who comes from raymond chandler’s los angeles and the noir school of american cinema but finds himself caught in a science fiction film set in contemporary paris; or emily brontë who belongs in a bbc biopic but ends up (to her horror) in the wasteland of weekend; or the pimps and gangsters in vivre sa vie, who come from the hardscrabble hollywood gangster films of raoul walsh and melvin leroy but find themselves in a film modeled on carl dryer’s slow, sensitive, metaphysical cinema – even they sense that they are in the wrong film, all dressed up and with nowhere to go.

 

“i’ve seen the novel of today at the cinema…it’s called le mepris, the novelist is someone named godard.” – louis aragon

le mepris is a film that mimics michelangelo antonioni’s aesthetic as godard astutely copies antonioni’s oblique modernist framing, mysteriously empty spaces, slow italicized camera pans, and ambiguous shifts in space – with humans never quite sure where they belonged or how they should act. in antonioni’s work the famous “alienation” at hand was always an aftereffect – the main attraction was always the interaction of his beautiful main characters and the strange social world that mankind had created, seemingly ad-hoc – a social space that was, to a degree, efficient, logical, and clean – what french sociologist marc augé called a “non-place” in his “anthropological” study of contemporary (1994) urban life. these “non-places” are often areas of high transit: airports, hospitals, subway stations, parking structures, business parks, and perhaps the most conspicuous of “non-places,” the corporate office. what antonioni noticed was that these “non-places” were strangely ill suited to emotions, spontaneity, sexuality, and human quirks. these spaces required a flattening out of our nature producing a neutered emotional blankness seen to full effect in stanley kubrick’s 2001: a space odyssey. while antonioni was not the first or the only person to notice these sorts of spaces – one need only think, aside from kubrick’s film, of orson welles’s the trial, billy wilder’s the apartment, or jacques tati’s playtime – he was the person who made such spaces a central characteristic in a consistent body of work.

while human factors were never suppressed or controlled by the state in antonioni’s films – as we see in the work of george orwell (1984) or anthony burgess (a clockwork orange)- they were nevertheless managed and directed, but how? was it, as the frankfurt school and michele foucault suggested, controlled by a cabal of conformist cultural producers, a plutocracy, and the state apparatus? or was there a more complex, organic relationship at work? were these emotions and instinctual appetites anachronistic or still in some way relevant, aside from their reproductive function? how does one navigate this new “non-place?” these were the central question at the heart of every antonioni film and godard here takes up these questions.

“modernity possesses antiquity like a nightmare that creeps over it.” – walter benjamin

but while antonioni’s films adhered to a form of neo-classical modernism godard’s work didn’t follow those rules. antonioni’s films were austere, detached, critical, ironic, and moralizing, and godard managed to touch on all of these – sometimes lightly (a married woman) and sometimes bluntly (weekend) – but he also brought with him his own ‘excess baggage.’ his work was full of unruly paradoxes and clashing contradictions that were carefully layered and juxtaposed. le mepris is emotionally extravagant but with a cool, sardonic edge; there is an uneasy tension between symbols and documentary realism, between romantic sincerity and hardheaded irony, between classical quotations and topical jokes; between heartfelt displays and mocking attacks. while le mepris evoked antonioni – as une femme est une femme evoked vincente minelli – godard here was on his own.

le mepris conjures the mediterranean wide-screen landscapes of l’avventura (1960) but now in technicolor. in this phase of his work godard was contrasting straight from the can primary colors to natural hues. when one thinks of the color of his 60’s work what comes to mind are the extraordinary sequences that take place in the forest and the seaside in pierrot le fou, and are so beautifully contrasted to the city shots painted (by the production designer pierre guffroy) in red, yellow and blue; or the brown and gray landscape of suburban paris, seen outside a train window, in la chinoise, contrasted to the regular use of red throughout the film (presumably signifying communism and/or mao’s little red book); or the beautiful trees in two or three things i know about her, contrasted to the harsh primaries of consumer products and advertising that constantly surround the main characters. but in all of godard’s color work flesh tones always play off primaries, most prominently here a bright yellow towel against brigitte bardot’s flesh in le mepris – a motif that returns twenty years later in prenom carmen.

 

interestingly the following year from le mepris antonioni would make red desert (1965) that would use color in a similar way, contrasting natural hues with man made primaries, but antonioni’s palette was more traditional. for example the fruit cart painted in shades gray and beige in red desert might be a painting by morandi, one of antonioni’s favorite painters, but an erstwhile traditionalist, and anti-modernist within the schools of post-war art. meanwhile godard’s sensibility was more pop using supermarket colors in a more seemingly random, ironic, offhand way and well within the modernist tradition of sixties art. for example, we can compare godard’s work of the same period with james rosenquist’s f-111 (1964-65), a satire of american consumer society and its military industrial complex (the f-111 was the most sophisticated fighter jet of the time) painted in bright day-glow primaries associated then with car dealerships, supermarkets and advertising. this confluence of godard’s work with pop art would reach an apotheosis with made in usa, two or three things i know about her, and weekend, all from 1967.

brigitte bardot plays camille javal, the disaffected antonioni heroine of l’avventura. they are linked by a crucial scene, that godard quotes later in the film, where monica vitti in antonioni’s film puts on a wig in front of her best friend, that she suddenly comes to resemble – a friend who will soon disappear, suggesting some form of metaphysical transference has taken place. camille’s husband paul (michele piccoli) wears a hat that links him to the american school of cinema, via dean martin’s role in some came running (1958), name checked by paul himself. already their cinematic personas – conferred by their headdress – hint at irreconcilable differences. this is a recurring motif in godard’s work from his first feature a bout de souffle, where, as godard explained himself, jean-paul belmondo’s character was based on the the crime/noir school of american cinema including the harder the fall (seen in poster form) and jean seberg’s character came from a previous film with otto preminger, bonjour tristesse.

the plot of the disprezzo/le mepris centers around the disintegration of a relationship, of paul and camille, a young recently married couple, who have not been together long. camille is a former secretary/typist and paul is a professional writer and aspiring playwright. paul has been summoned to cinecitta, the fabled film studio in rome, to help doctor a script for a production already under way – an adaptation of the odyssey, the 7th century bc greek poem – being helmed by fritz lang playing himself and jeremy prokosch (jack palance) an american producer. when a script doctor is called for during a production it usually means that there is trouble on the set, as is the case here. paul and camille have recently purchased an expensive apartment they need to pay for so the french couple head to rome…” read the full article at cineaction website, where you can find this and many great article on all the films worth watching. by uh