Wednesday | December 1, 1999 6:30 pm

Contempt
(Le Mepris)

Screening on Film

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
With Brigitte Bardot , Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance.
France, 1963, 35mm, color, 103 min.
French with English subtitles.

Based on Alberto Moravia’s novel Il Disprezzo (A Ghost at Noon), Contempt focuses on the break-up of a marriage while making sharp commentary on international filmmaking. A scriptwriter (Piccoli) and his wife (Bardot) are visited by an American producer (Palance) working on a new version of The Odyssey. Caught between the director (Fritz Lang), who wants to capture the reality of Homer’s world, and the crass producer who imagines a vulgarization of the story, the writer finds his personal and professional life collapsing.