Original subtitles

We haven't used cinema.

It's an unknown science.

To me, it's still the reference.

I still think that in a relationship,

if they don't agree on films,

they'll divorce.

If it's music or football, they can get along fine.

Once Upon A Time There Was... CONTEMPT

Once upon a time, in 1963,

there was Contempt, adapted from an Alberto Moravia novel,

the story of a film being made and a relationship unravelling.

In Rome, screenwriter Paul Java! - Michel Piccoli -

and his wife Camille - Brigitte Bardot -

join director Fritz Lang - playing himself -

filming an adaptation of The Odyssey.

Hollywood producer Jeremy Prokosch - Jack Palance -

unhappy with Lang's work, asks Paul to rewrite the script.

Prokosch flirts with Camille.

The young woman thinks her husband is pushing her towards the producer,

and begins to despise him.

Camille leaves Capri with Prokosch.

Both die in a car accident.

Fritz Lang finishes the film alone

with his assistant, played by Jean-Luc Godard himseff.

Why don't you love me anymore?

That's life.

Why do you despise me?

I'll never tell you, not even on my deathbed.

You knew we kissed and you were still ready to change your mind.

I turned the job down for you. So you'd change your mind about me.

Don't touch me.

I don't love you anymore.

There's no way I'll ever love you again.

Even if I turn it down, you'll despise me?

- Yes, I will. - Why?

There must be a reason.

You're the reason.

What do you mean, me?

I don't know. You're not a man.

I loved you so much.

Now it's impossible.

I hate you because you can't make me feel.

I can! You're almost in tears.

The only thing I remember is...

I thought: I don't know what contempt is.

After the film, I knew no more. Nor do I today.

Jean-Luc Godard was 33 when he filmed Contempt.

His first film, in 1960,

Breathless, was an international hit.

It shows an inspired improviser,

always moving, fascinated by techniques,

using variable focal lengths, ultra-rapid film stock,

portable recorders and hand-held cameras.

A fan of quotes from books, films and music,

this virtuoso editor is a cinema one-man band.

In 1961 he married Anna Karina, a young Danish actress.

Their youthful cinematic intimacy lasted 7 years.

The Karina years.

When I was born, in 1930,

long after, I thought that my mother had never seen a talking film.

Nor had my father.

That must be why I started talking very late.

At 4 or 5, which is much too late.

I made up for that later, admittedly!

We are children of the Liberation, which we didn't know,

and the cinema.

We are the only cinema people,

as filmmakers,

to be born in a movie theatre,

a film library.

At the end of the 50s, France thirsted for renewal in every field:

nouveau roman, new institutions, new front, new realism,

nouvelle figuration, new music, new towns,

New Wave, an expression applied solely to the cinema.

Born in 1958, the New Wave lasted only 4 years.

During this period, 97 young directors shot their first film,

mostly commercial failures.

Lots moved to television.

Of the New Wave's aesthetic offensive,

there remained but a small handful of filmmakers by 1963.

After Breathless, A Woman is a Woman and The Carabineers,

which were films produced by de Beauregard and Carlo Ponti,

and after The Carabineers

and A Woman is a Woman flopped, Carlo Ponti

didn't want to do any more fantastical films

like those he thought I made.

I'd said to de Beauregard:

"Tell Carlo Ponti that if he has a novel to adapt, I'll adapt it.

"I'm quite ready to make classical films,

"I love all forms of cinema, and why not?"

Among the novels for which Ponti could acquire the rights

was Contempt. So I read it and told him...

- You hadn't read it before? -No.

But I knew Moravia

from a novel that I consider his best,

that influenced me a lot, entitled Mistaken Ambitions.

So that's how it happened.

I saw Moravia, he agreed, and that was that.

He didn't work on the script at all, he trusted me.

He was a charming man.

In the early 60s, the movie industry was in crisis.

Television was spreading, theatres were closing,

the number of films produced by Hollywood halved

between 1958 and 1963.

American majors partnered with Europeans.

Italy became the cinema's land of exile.

Movie giants struggled at the end of their career.

The masters of classicism turned to television,

stopped filming

or came to Italy to make epics,

like Fritz Lang who shot The Odyssey in Contempt.

The German filmmaker and self-styled studio artisan

of the great Hollywood age, is idealized

in Contempt as the absolute creator.

Because to Jean-Luc Godard, cinemas is art par excellence.

If someone who didn't know the cinema were to ask you, Fritz Lang;

"How would you define what man is,

and more particularly, one who is a film director?

Would you say a hard worker, an artist?

What makes a man a director?

What's special about him?

You know I don't like the term "artist".

What is an artist?

Someone who works hard, who knows his job.

A great surgeon is an artist in my opinion.

I'm someone who works hard.

I like my job. I must say I like ita lot.

I have a somewhat different feeling.

Van Gogh was more important

than the carpenter who made the easel

on which he painted, even if it was beautiful.

You're absolutely right.

It's an excellent example.

Maybe I'm wrong!

Lang arrives in the film,

as a representative of a cinema

that Godard knows can exist no longer.

He's a sort of... He personifies something

that Godard totally admired,

that made him want to make films, but that is finished.

We respected Fritz Lang hugely.

It seemed natural to go and see him. I went to Munich.

He was interested, by the wages too.

He was very, very old,

almost blind.

I find that fine today, but at the time...

I paid it no mind, I saw no sense in it.

My wife, Camille.

- How do you do. - Fritz Lang.

Hello.

He's the one who did that western with Dietrich.

It was terrific!

I prefer.

M?

We saw it on television. I really liked it.

Thank you. That's kind of you.

Francesca!

I love the scene where Ferrer leans on the scales.

Thank you. When I finish The Odyssey...

Mr. Prokosch is inviting you for a drink.

I don't know.

It was the first film you shot with a big budget.

Not really. It was a film, at the time, in old francs...

Yes, the film itself cost more than the others.

The others cost 25-30 million francs.

Whereas that one came in at around 80-100 million.

It was increased by Bardot's fee,

Lang's fee and Prokosch's fee.

And Moravia's, but that wasn't counted.

Bardot came through Sami Frey.

He said: "I'll talk to Brigitte".

Brigitte remembered that the New Wave had praised her

while others had slated her so there you are...

From there on, it had begun.

It was your first time shooting with Bardot

who may, under your direction,

with your distinctive way of working,

not be in danger but be taking a big risk.

Yes, but I believe that a film,

a work of art, is always a battle,

and if there's no danger, if there's no risk...

Risk in aesthetic terms is what gives the thing value.

Has she made many good films?

No, she's made one.

And God Created Woman, a very good film that I like a lot.

And this will be her second.

- You're self-confident. - You have to be!

Godard's friend Jacques Rozier directed one of the little-known jewels

of the New Wave, Adieu Philippine.

He devoted 2 documentaries to the making of Contempt.

I'd got the go-ahead from both Jean-Luc Godard and Bardot.

So I followed the whole shoot in Capri.

It's hard to understand but it was like a thunderbolt.

Jean-Luc Godard was the symbol of the New Wave

and Bardot the symbol of traditional French cinema.

She was the great film star.

Not just from a French point of view,

from an international point of view.

Brigitte Bardot appeared in 1956, wild and free,

nearly nude and sexually liberated,

in And God Created Woman by R. Vadim.

Godard immediately defended the actress, her character

and the film's realism.

This modern heroine ushered in a new era for women.

Bardot shook up the phony representation

of sex in both the American and the French film industries.

With disarming sincerity, she hid neither her lovers

nor her desires nor her breakdowns,

like her 1960 suicide attempt.

When she signed up for Contempt, she was 29

and "the soul of our era”, according to Jean Cocteau.

Brigitte was very protected.

At first, she was rather suspicious.

Bardot was advised by her entourage, who were unaware

of the importance in film terms of the Bardot-Godard meeting.

Afterwards, she shrewdly understood that it was important.

So you shout "Camille” here.

Once Brigitte has passed by,

you count up to five...

Brigitte was extremely attentive, extremely precise,

extremely disciplined

and no doubt extremely fascinated by Godard.

Godard didn't burden her with explanations,

be they psychological, philosophical or personal.

I think I succeeded in helping Brigitte

feel completely at ease

before the silent, impressive character that Godard

showed to actors.

Jean-Luc is intimidating, even though we're very intimate,

very close, he's very intimidating.

The way he is has never been a hindrance to me.

On the contrary, he and I,

by some miracle, his miracle,

understand each other immediately.

I listened to what he told others. He said very little.

"Turn right, sit there, say your lines."

I watched him closely.

We tried one last costume in Rome, which was the hat.

I noticed that he chose the hat

he would have wanted to wear.

I said: "Now I know how I have to act."

So I played Jean-Luc.

Brigitte and I managed

to put ourselves in Godard's and Anna Karina's shoes.

I think he was very moved to film this story.

Firstly because he was totally included

in the story personally, his greatest intimacy.

And he had a gorgeous actress

who was an international star at the time.

But by his side during filming

was another admirable actress.

He had both his women with him.

This imaginary woman

and a real woma n.

The day began badly, everyone's tense.

The spying is unbearable.

Especially to Godard. He tells the paparazzi so.

Furious at being dismissed, Claudio, Lucciano, Paulo decided

they'd get a photo of Bardot come what may.

Leaving the restaurant, there's a scuffle.

They insult people in the street, especially me.

And when we're forced to react, they report us,

saying that we hit them.

The poor wretches!

The next day, they said they were beaten up.

Why publish that article?

Because you're not nice to us.

We were very angry, Brigitte...

and we wanted to tell everyone what you are like.

Why don't you ever allow us to take photos?

She was the first to be subjected to this media pressure.

There was the Louis Matte film A Very Private Affair

that recounted the difficulties of the life

of a star, her personal life.

At the same time

you're solicited, there's a certain euphoria

in being a mythological object,

but with all the constraints that implies.

What are you doing?

What are you doing?

Looking.

Don't stay by yourself. Join us.

What were you talking about?

She was a bit bored.

I don't think she was...

She must have been surprised no one was wooing her

or falling in love with her, I think.

Or courting her a little... So she was bored.

No, she was a very nice kid.

She did what Godard asked fairly obediently.

One day we were filming on the roof of Villa Malaparte

and Bardot had that hairstyle from And God Created Woman,

which made her a hit,

a kind of beehive.

We began shooting a scene and Godard said:

"That beehive won't do.

“I'll ask her to take out her hairpins

"and leave her hair alone."

"That thing above your forehead is at least 15 centimetres.

"If I walk 15 metres on my hands,

"for each metre that I walk,

"do you agree to lower your hair by 1 centimetre?"

Yes, because you couldn't.

So she said "yes". And so I did this...

Look.

Look.

Doesn't it suit me?

No, I prefer you as a blonde.

And I prefer you without a hat and cigar.

It's just to look like Dean Martin in Some Came Running.

What a laugh!

What is?

You may want to look like Dean Martin,

but it's more like Martin's ass.

Who's that?

Never read the adventures of Martin's ass?

No.

One day he goes to Baghdad to buy a flying carpet.

He finds this really nice one,

so he sits on it, but it doesn't take off.

"Hardly surprising," says the carpet seller.

Are you listening?

The shoot took a very long time.

The continuity girl and I were getting very worried.

The script was our record of scenes shot.

Despite the legend, Godard did sometimes have a script...

The one we had was 132 pages long.

And there was so much left to shoot.

In three quarters of the time, we'd shot a quarter of the film.

So Godard solved the problem

by shooting very long scenes in the flat.

He used a lot of lateral camera movement.

The camera came and went from one room to the next.

He made up the backlog in Rome shooting interiors.

The domestic scene at the heart of the film lasts 34 minutes.

I think my aim was to make it half an hour long, if possible.

It enabled me to bridge the gulf that I always felt

when I got to 50 minutes and had to get to 65.

Then either I'd shoot long sequences or...

I don't remember that well, but I felt there was...

...too much of a lull so I said: "We'll fill it up."

"Nobody will notice."

In Pierrot le fou there were huge lulls.

We filled them with... I don't know.

I feel that that's doing the film down.

If it's cinema, you fill it with cinema things

that may not have much to do with the film.

That's always been my problem.

That and never mastering the difference

between the essay and the novel.

Sit down, I have to talk to you.

What about the cinema?

Camille, | need to talk to you.

Al right, I'm listening.

I need... to talk to you.

Earlier, before the phone rang,

I told you I didn't want to take this job

if I couldn't be sure of your love.

You said you loved me

and that I should take it.

Yes.

I'm sure you lied.

Why, I don't know.

Out of pity, self-interest...

What self-interest?

You holding on to this flat.

How can you know what I think?

In fact, I couldn't care less.

You can sell the flat, I don't care.

You said it was better than a hotel.

Not a tall. I said that to make you happy.

Often, in my disputes with technicians,

or what they call my arrogance or bad temper, which I admit to,

there's simply a desire for dispute

without it being personal.

To give you a description, I like tennis

because there's a link to cinema.

You have a square or a rectangle,

a net in the middle,

one person to the left, one person to the right.

Between the two are the facts.

So let's look at the facts.

Let's see how the facts from each side go to the persons.

It makes lots of patterns, angles and different stuff.

Camille!

Camille.

I despise you! That's what I feel.

That's why the love's gone.

And you disgust me when you touch me.

I have a scene.

The set designer comes up

with a room like that, let's say.

I say that won't work.

I want four walls, like that.

So I say:

this man is sitting at this desk.

There's the desk. There has to be a window here.

This is what we have to start off. He's sitting here.

He gives me a door here.

I have a scene where

the man who's sitting here

has to walk here. It takes a long time,

| don't want to...

Wait, waste...

...waste time.

So give me a door here so he can go this way.

I wouldn't know whether I'd want the desk there or there.

But why not?

I don't know. I have to see everything:

the desk, the chair, the door.

Listen...

If the door is there, likewise, I don't want to waste time.

Do you remember in Rome where we fimed Contempt?

I should say something. When I saw that scene...

I should be honest.

I know that in these cases you improvised.

I find that scene...

...extraordinary.

No, but...

I'm talking.

In this scene, I understood why you improvised at times.

You always have a great sense of vision.

Why is it necessary to see everything?

Maybe it's that I'm interested in the entirety of things

rather than something in particular.

I'm Paul Javal, Mr. Prokosch...

I know.

It looks swell. I really like Cinemascope.

It wasn't made for people

but for snakes and funerals.

What's the matter, Miss Vanini. Is it about the script?

He says it's not the same on screen as on paper.

Jeremy!

The money came in thanks to Bardot.

And with the money came the constraints.

Godard yielded on things from having more money than usual,

having a star,

having lovely sets, Cinemascope.

He had all the toys he wanted to make the film, and he needed them

because it's the film of his dreams.

But he was forced to give the producers certain guarantees.

You define art as a ho-compromise zone.

Compromise with what?

No, I think it's a compromise.

I've only made films with producers

with whom I've reached a compromise.

One of the first

was to be able to spend money as I liked.

The first time, Beauregard got scared. Then he trusted me.

And he monitored the film in his way,

but there was a compromise.

The terms of the debate haven't changed much in 40 years.

The producer-no producer debate...

There are no more producers.

There are those who try,

who have the innocence to be one,

but who don't have the capacity.

I've known 3 or 4 with whom there was...

...dialogue, friendship, dispute.

Is dialogue indispensable?

Yes, and that doesn't exist today.

Absolutely.

You don't miss the Prokoschs?

Yes, on certain films.

I remember when I won a prize in Venice,

Fellini was in the theatre.

And during the conversation...

At the press conference, I praised the producers.

He said: "You're exaggerating”.

I said: "No, but for Carlo Ponti, you'd never have made La Strada."

Earlier we were talking about the problem in France.

But there's one thing...

I know what you mean.

It's the only country where the director owns copyright.

I don't know if it's copyright.

It's the only place where a director is seen as an author in law.

It's something extraordinary about France.

This doesn't exist anywhere else.

The distributors and the backers,

they make cuts.

We can't do anything in America, England or Germany.

I can name two or three of my films...

where they cut exactly those scenes

for which I made the film.

And you can't do anything.

Seeing the dailies, the producers said:

"Nothing's happening with Brigitte Bardot who is a global...

"...sex symbol. Something has to happen.

"Can't they kiss, or sleep together?"

"No, no." He replied.

He'd reply to telegrams, I seem to recall,

or perhaps I imagined it, but it tallies perfectly,

to "King Kong Levine"

and "Mussolini Ponti".

The producers, not Beauregard,

the Americans and Ponti, mainly the Americans, said:

"We paid to see Brigitte Bardot naked and she's never naked."

The goods didn't fit their billing,

because the Americans had staked their money

on Bardot and a bit on Godard,

but it was Bardot who was the bankable element.

This is important in understanding Godard.

Godard didn't say: "No, I'll kick up a fuss."

He said: "You want nude scenes, I'll give you them,

"but they'll be coherent with my project.”

See my feet in the mirror?

Yes.

Think they're pretty?

Very.

You like my ankles?

Yes.

And my knees, too?

Yes. I really like your knees.

And my thighs?

And your thighs.

Do you see my bottom in the mirror?

Yes.

Do you think I have nice buttocks?

Yes. Very.

I told them: "Leave it to me, I promise you

"so many minutes naked, and that's it"

But it fits with the film.

It fitted with the film.

There are other scenes that are less coherent.

That was coherent.

We had to make naked footage, if you like.

- You don't regret... - Not at all.

You can't regret it. You can say it's bad, but you can't regret it.

I took it upon myself.

He managed to get Brigitte...

He got Brigitte to act out a questionnaire on

"What do you think of the parts of my body?"

"If you love them all, then you love me."

There was no need for any smut.

We'll just do a very chaste scene

on the greatest intimacy that exists between man and woman.

One very important thing in Contemptis the music.

You feel like...

Was that your request?

| don't recall.

It's very romantic.

Yes. I might have given indications

to Delerue, who did it his way.

- He did it after the film? - Yes.

- While watching it? - Yes, after editing.

I'd often ask him...

"I want so many minutes like this, so many minutes like that"

Then I'll manage.

The music for Contempt was among the best work by Georges Delerue,

who wrote the scores for more than 300 films.

Varying the romantic theme in a way that was repetitive,

obsessive and desperate, Jean-Luc Godard created a myth.

The eternal blue of the sea, the blood-red car,

the sun-yellow bathrobes,

the immaculate white statues in the Roman flat...

Godard shares a palette with the painters of new realism

and pop art, as well as fashion designers

from the early sixties.

Villa Malaparte, named for the Italian writer,

lends this opera of romantic break-up

its futurist, blockhouse architecture

in the form of sacrificial attars.

Godard, the northerner,

who likes only grey water, cloudy skies,

where the light changes, etc...

meets the Mediterranean.

Godard meets maximum otherness.

Otherness to him is woman, but here,

it's also nature, the landscape, the sun.

Godard, before leaving for Italy,

had described the basic colours in his screenplay.

He said: "The Mediterranean means blue..."

That means the palette

was totally conceived in advance.

Beside the musicians who play for baby boomer dancers,

New Wave directors film their bodies

and make movies about them.

Godard and his camera accompany this generation of disposable income,

surprise parties, rock'n'rolf and yéyé,

"made in France".

Johnny Hallyday and Salut Les Copains play to 150,000 kids

at a free concert, Place de la Nation, in June 1963.

With this first collective event,

youth becomes a sociological category

for which Jean-Luc Godard is the poet.

When I made Histoire(s) du cinema, I spoke on a program me

called A New Wave, not The New Wave.

At one point, I point to the boys and girls and say:

"The New Wave was what we wanted at the time."

That was my view. I don't know if Francois wanted that, but I think so.

Rivette less so, perhaps.

Rohmer, I don't know. It was more me and Truffaut.

It was to show boys and girls

who, when they saw the film,

would see themselves in the world.

When you'd go to see Godard's films,

you'd think: "How does this guy

"know who we are right now?"

Suddenly, people who were very young at the time

allowed themselves to talk like in Godard's films,

to do things that were done in Godard's films.

He was the one who best condensed

desires for a new way of life compared to previous generations.

The youngsters of the 60s

threw out the old furniture and decorated their flats

like in Godard's films.

The aesthetic became a way of life.

Thanks to Godard-Coutard. They invented an aesthetic

that was radically new. And, a rare thing in cinema history,

it arrived in people's lives.

Though American culture impregnated European youth,

there was a growing hostility towards Washington.

On one hand, there was greater fascination for rock, jazz,

beatnik literature, lifestyle and lust for life,

on the other, race riots,

the Bay of Pigs landings,

the Kennedy assassination, military opposition

to all liberation movements,

and Vietnam, where waves of Buddhist monks

immolated themselves during summer 1963

Godard, who passionately loved great American movies,

broke away from Hollywood's decline

and Washington's aggressive foreign policy.

Contempt is the film of that break-up.

"Dear Paul, | found your revolver and took the bullets out.

"If you won't leave, I will.

"Jeremy Prokosch has to return to Rome, so I'll get a lift with him."

TAKE CARE.

FAREWELL.

I found a great difference when we worked together.

It's very important

and I think you're right.

I'm talking now about the car accident.

The car accident where Palance and Bardot were killed.

Certainly what I would have done...

They're in the car going faster and faster...

Maybe there's something... He can't do that.

I'd show the accident.

But you don't show it.

You showed them dead between two trucks.

For you, the consequences

were far more important than the accident itself.

And that's interesting,

and significant.

The discussion with Lang about the accident is interesting.

There's the ellipsis, in the end, of the impact.

I've always tried to avoid that. I don't know how to do it...

You don't know how...?

I'd need...

I'd need stunt men, I'd need to wreck an Alfa Romeo...

When you say you don't know, do you prefer an ellipsis?

No, that's not the point...

No...

You don't say: "I want to do an ellipsis." Not at all

I think that's silly...

Creating an ellipsis is giving it a sense

and you want... There's intent.

I think that unconsciously I was against that intent...

I think that what attracted me unconsciously, without knowing it,

was coming near to something,

which in films is mission impossible,

where you see what you don't see.

There are always three images.

A good film shows you the third.

We shouldn't see the first,

we shouldn't see the second,

so it makes it the third, which may not have to be filmed.

We haven't used cinema.

It was there, like that. We immediately put...

a kind of hypertext on it.

The text didn't come from cinema.

It was like telling a child how it should speak.

In Contempt, the film carries on, cinema carries on.

The story carries on, Greece carries on, history...

The camera carries on filming.

In the end, is Contempt a film about the twilight?

The twilight of cinema?

I'd say glory... there's the famous phrase

by Madame de Staél to Napoleon:

"Glory, Sire..."

"Glory, Sire, is the dazzling mourning of happiness.”

So it's dazzling.

I think it has that. The glory of cinema...

Contempt was released in Paris on 27 December 1963

in 5 theatres. With 380,000 tickets sold in France,

it ranked 7th among French releases that year.

Disappointing for B. Bardot,

but one of Jean-Luc Godard's biggest box-office successes.

After Contempt, he made another 46 films,

- often isolated and embattled - seeking to show the power of cinema

with militant post-68 films, then made for TV movies,

feature-length films in the 80s and 90s,

finally the film-essays he has been making over the past few years

in his monastic refuge at Rolle, Switzerland,

on the banks of Lake Geneva.

This ambition of cinema...

People didn't know that, apart from certain madmen...

It stops in the sixties?

It starts to decline.

It slowly declined and today it's virtually finished.

That doesn't mean there aren't islands of independent film

that generate...

other things like that that people can always do.

We've been stripped of our intellectual resources.

We have technical and financial resources.

You can make a film with 10 dollars if you have 10 dollars.

With modest equipment. Nobody does.

By using a small video camera.

I hesitate to do so for psychological reasons.

A former tennis champion will play the mother. Catherine Tanvier.

If I come along with that, she'll think:

"No, that's not cinema.

"They were right when they said this boy was mental."

If, on the contrary, I bring a big camera, she'll be reassured.

But I'll be worried by the fact she's reassured.

What reassured her?

Much later,

I carved for myself cinema where, it's said, the camera is useful.

What's it used for? It's used to see.

To see what we can't see.

Like a microscope is used to see what we can't see.

Something interesting socially in that cinema

is that we can see things life-size,

be they infinitely small or infinitely big.

It's used to see what people don't see.

I once came out with a phrase:

"People have the courage to live their life, however it may be,

"whether trader or tramp, they live their life,

"but they don't have the courage to imagine it."

Cinema should have given them that courage.

Ulysses, to the sea.

- We're ready, Mr. Lang. - Thank you.

Quiet on the set.

Camera!

Action!

Tracking shot!

Subtitles - Henry Moon for TELETOTA