Best performance in Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris AKA Contempt

No Giorgia Moll, No Cred.

I thought about it, but I couldn't see her as anything but a supporting player. 90% of her lines are repeating what one of the others has said.

I'm afraid I don't think this is either Godard's most conventional or greatest movie,(in that Breathless is more narratively conventional - those legendary jump cuts barely register these days – and there are many other of his films I prefer, and I guess therefore think are 'greater' than Contempt. That's not to say it's not a good'un!

Fritz Lang seems so amusing and genial in this film - perhaps in contrast to Palance - so I guess that counts as a pretty good performance.

I knew that claim was provocative, and certainly those are good points. I wonder, though, to what extent Breathless remade the conventions so thoroughly that, as you say, its innovations pass unnoticed now. I would still say Contempt is the closest Godard came to making a Hollywood film, and of course it is an elegy for a certain form of filmmaking that he certainly knew was vanishing.

If you want critical hyperbole, Colin MacCabe (in his excellent Godard biography) calls the film "the greatest work of art produced in postwar Europe."

Michel Piccoli is always good.

I like this film in spite of the terrible performances.

Do you blame Godard? Do you like the acting in any of his films?

This is the first of his films in which actors must act in conventional narrative film ways

If you want critical hyperbole, Colin MacCabe (in his excellent Godard biography) calls the film "the greatest work of art produced in postwar Europe."

LOL I'm normally pro-McCabe but that's a truly meaningless accolade.

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How can it not be Michel Piccoli?

I was thinking that each of the performances offers something different that might appeal to different viewers. - Bardot's starpower, Palance's theatricality, Lang's philosophizing.
Thinking about what Alfred said, the acting leads you to expect conventional psychologizing, but the film evades those explanations of the drama. I did start wondering about how a version of this with Belmondo and Karina might have worked.
Piccoli is particularly impressive for providing a centre to the movie, despite his character being notable mostly for fecklessness.

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Interesting! I'd be curious if people think Bardot's performance is bad, or just "not the best".

Only nine votes? Wonder how the prophet Elijah would have voted

Assuming I remember correctly, I thought Bardot's performance was rote--indistinguishable from her mass-market films. Did Godard specifically cast her for that sort of performance, or was there a futile effort to get something more nuanced from her?

There's nothing in the MacCabe book specifically on her performance, but it says that Bardot was admired by the Cahiers critics in general for lacking the "over-sophisticated style of classic French film acting".
It also, however, says that Godard was annoyed by Bardot's entourage and off-screen demands, and that he had to do handstands to amuse her on set.

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/video-essay-coming-apart-jean-luc-godard-s-contempt
I remember really liking this video when I watched it. May watch again soon

There was a lot of good stuff about whether Michel P should be wearing a hat or not.

I wore my Weekend T-shirt to a rep screening of this tonight; that's like the art-film equivalent of dressing up for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Honestly, I think I'd be inclined to vote for Bardot here--thought she was very good. This will never be my favourite Godard film, but I was was more engaged tonight than the previous two times.

As long as she's still around, there's always the possibility for a remake!

That joke in the film about M vs. Rancho Notorious...I mentioned it after the film to my friend (it was her first Godard film). I like the joke--appreciate it; I don't actually laugh--and find the moment that produced it interesting. But could it possibly be of less interest to someone in 2023?

Would the people who find it an excessively obscure or trivial reference be watching the film at all now (other than your friend)? I mean, by Godard's standards, it's hardly an abstruse reference.
I always took it to be a joke on the extremes of Cahiers auteurism which, yes, is hardly a burning issue 60 years later, but the diminishing number of people who "get it" probably are better off than those who can parse all the details of Godard's May '68 references in the later films.

That's the meaning of the joke, yes...I think the line wouldn't be noticed at all if you were coming to the film as a blank slate. There'd be no reason to notice it: someone tells Lang they liked his western with Marlene Dietrich, Lang says he likes M better. I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say here...that the joke simultaneously struck me as hopelessly dated and sort of endearing.

Endearing in a "People used to argue about this stuff like the world depended on it." (Says a guy who posts on a message board.)

Given the state of the world, maybe there still is a sense in which the world depends on it.

fun fact: Godard married the female lead human from Bresson's donkey movie.

Right

There's a movie about that relationship streaming on MUBI right now iirc.

Given the state of the world, maybe there still is a sense in which the world depends on it.

I sometimes flatter myself to that effect--i.e., that everything I care about is still important in some way beyond me--but getting old, among other things, is coming to an acceptance of that one Steely Dan lyric: those days are gone forever, over a long time ago. There are still small corners of the world where those things still matter--here, obviously--but in the larger scheme of things, not even close. (Including Steely Dan, probably...maybe...I don't know.)

That's why I like the stupid Immaculate Grid game I post about every day: Sixto Lezcano and Bert Campaneris and Don Mincher still matter.

That joke in the film about _M_ vs. _Rancho Notorious_...I mentioned it after the film to my friend (it was her first Godard film). I like the joke--appreciate it; I don't actually laugh--and find the moment that produced it interesting. But could it possibly be of less interest to someone in 2023?

I own the Richard Brody bio but maybe I should get the Colin MacCabe too?

The MacCabe book goes off on tangents, like the chapter on Godard's Cahiers era is as much a (literal) tribute to Bazin. I felt like Brody was much more critical of Godard's personal weaknesses, almost to the point of taking pleasure in exposing them; MacCabe is much more demure, sometimes to the point of vagueness. He does a good job giving equal weight to all of the stages of Godard's films, he seems as energized by the post-60s work as by the "classics".

Before this film Michel Piccoli was more of a a stage actor although he had done lots of bit parts in films (he had a small part in LE DOULOS earlier the same year), not sure if this was considered a breakout or star-making role for him.

jean-luc godard’s contempt is a movie about how being in the most beautiful place in italy with the most beautiful woman in the world actually sucks

— Alex Shephard (@alex_shephard) September 23, 2023

i own the brody (inherited from my cousin, who has reached that serene age where he no longer needs to care abt the things that energised him in his vibrant documentary-making youth)
but have not yet cracked it open. i borrowed the mccabe years ago (from ian penman no less) while i was writing the if…. book, and in that context found it extremely underwhelming. mccabe puts in the work articulating the director's own current line and purpose on whatever project is current at the time, but brings next to no critical perspective from anywhere else, so it ends up reading like a succession of thumbs-uppy NFT leaflets for a godard season

critical support for the avant-garde can be hard! but yr colin mccabe ffs

I'm not sure I'd hang with Michel Piccoli either tbh

The Brody bio, which I read exactly a year ago, is as daft in its judgments as you'd expect. Crumbles in its last third but a fun thing.

I'm not sure I'd hang with Michel Piccoli either tbh

what is this about Piccoli, Lang, Palance?

Brigitte Bardot was absolutely amazing in this philisophically challenging film, and she completely defined it