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Contempt
(Le Mépris)

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

Based on Alberto Moravia’s novel Il Disprezzo (A Ghost at Noon), Godard’s early masterpiece focuses on the breakup of a marriage as it delivers sharp commentary on the state of international filmmaking. A scriptwriter (Piccoli), conscripted to craft an adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, is caught between the film’s earnest director (Fritz Lang) and its crass producer (Palance), who imagines a vulgarization of the story. Marital and professional contempt reach a crescendo as the locale shifts from Rome to a modernist villa in Capri, where Godard places the moral choices into stark relief.

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