[ AS ALWAYS, SPOILERS, IT’S ALL MY FAULT ]

My two favorite moments in Godard’s Contempt (1963):

1) Brigitte Bardot peering back over her shoulder at her husband and delivering to him—from her terrifying eyes—the first forays of her eponymous reassessment of his character. It’s possible I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman rendered on film than Bardot in THIS film, but beyond that fact—in this particular scene, her eyes exceed the constraints of physics, somehow, and I feel that she’s being inhabited by a god. This film, after all, is about the vengeance of the gods on pusillanimous “modern” people who “cope” rather than thrive, who spurn righteous bohemian art-making to churn instead a profitable, but meretricious, trade from their talents, who snuffle for favors from higher cocks in the Capitalist pecking order instead of defending their own integrity against vile, demeaning personal encroachments. You want to lose your lunch watching Palance slobber all over Bardot in this film, and to witness Michel Piccoli acquiesce like a shrugging serf to the producer’s seigneurial appropriation of his WIFE makes you want to find your lunch again so you can burn it to ashes and disperse them in a cloud over the flawless Mediterranean Sea where a significant chunk of the film is set. The gods are in this film, presented in their statues, but shining forth stern force from their eyes in first a blue and then a red glow—which is to say, these are LIVING GODS, not dead, but incandescent, present and extremely relevant to the doings of mortal men and women—all-seeing eyes of fierce judgment from the ancient world. THESE are the eyes Bardot borrows for her reappraisal of her husband’s virtue, or lack thereof… and VIRTUE is certainly the word for the thing he lacks. That’s why he has to dress up like Dean Martin—he has no inherent masculinity and must assume it (or at least, its appearance) from a role model, indeed a fictional one, in order to convince any interlocutor that he possesses those traits himself.

2) Jack Palance’s explosion of childlike delight when he sees a naked mermaid winnowing through the waves in the dailies from the Odyssey adaptation he is producing. He hams his entire role to the hilarious max, but particularly in this scene. He is so stimulated by the mermaid that he throws a tantrum, kicking reels of film out of an assistant’s hands, demanding that the rest of the film measure up to the mermaid’s lascivious promise. Fritz Lang (playing himself) was selected to direct this film not because of his legendary cinematic résumé, but because he is German, and as Palance reminds us, “Everyone knows it was a German who discovered Troy.” You have to wonder what kind of nonsense Godard must’ve run up against in the fabled Satanic Mills of Hollywood to give us such a character! Every scene Palance was in was just steak for him to chew and chew and chew, I loved it!

The music swells into magnificence at the drop of a hat, often drowning out the words; even if I understood French, I doubt I’d make out the dialogue without the subtitles. I’ve seen him do this in some of the other films (Weekend suggests itself). Then at other moments, the music swirls precipitately down the drain. The music is gorgeous, orchestral, moving, sentimental; yet it’s also arbitrary, fickle, self-serving. Is Godard, the “master,” merely playing games with us, the audience? Well, duh.

The movie ends with “Silencio!” Which of course brings Mulholland Drive to mind (ending with the same word) and… holy shit, this film runs all through that one, doesn’t it? Let’s see: in MD, the dark-haired beauty named Camilla (although she has amnesia and doesn’t actually know her name) gets out of the shower, puts on a blond wig, and examines herself in the mirror; in Contempt, the blond beauty named Camille gets out of the bath, dons a black wig, and examines herself in the mirror. (Am I remembering MD well enough? Been awhile since my last immersion. At least I now have an excuse to watch it again!) And both films examine the movie-making process from a… jaded perspective, shall we say. You know, there’s a weird scene in which they’re watching a lip-synced song and dance routine in a sparsely attended theater… and in MD you have the lady singing the Roy Orbison song in Spanish, which turns out to be lip-synced! Yeah, Lynch was all UP in Contempt’s folds and crevices, sans doute, yo. Definitely going to need to arrange a screening at some point; I’ll need to rewatch this one, too. And the sad thing is, I’ve seen it at least twice before, barely grokked it until this time…. For some reason, I’m ready for Godard these days. At least, 60’s Godard. I have no idea what he got up to later on.

Okay, if this were a film essay, it would be pathetic, but fortunately, it’s just an uneducated viewer’s response, and nothing more is required of me, so I’m going to give up NOW, since my tea is ready and bedtime’s just around the corner, and I’m definitely ready for it.

I should say, I’m hoping to figure out how to set up a “Films” section on this site. It seems pretty stupid to be using up my blog with all these film bits; the point of this site is to promote my writing, not blather on about the movies I’m watching… I’m only doing that because there seems to be an itch I need to scratch. So maybe I can scratch it in a Film section and leave this blog alone, if Textpattern will just cooperate; I’m not sanguine about that, however…. Another “however,” however, will direct us toward the wisdom that Time is Infinite. Etc.