Le mépris [videorecording] = Contempt / a film by Jean-Luc Godard ; Georges de Beauregard and Carlo Ponti produced it for Rome-Paris Films, Films Concordia, and Compagnia Cinematografia Champion.
Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Giorgia Moll, Fritz Lang. Credits from English subtitles. Originally released as a motion picture in 1963. Based on the novel Il disprezzo by Alberto Moravia. Features: Disc one: audio commentary by film scholar Robert Stam. Disc two: The dinosaur and the baby (1967): a conversation between Jean-Luc Godard and Fritz Lang (60 min.); Encounter with Fritz Lang (1963): a short film by Peter Fleischmann; two 1963 documentaries by Jacques Rozier featuring Godard on the set of Contempt: Bardot et Godard and Paparazzi; Jean-Luc Godard interview excerpt from the French television program Cinepanorama (1964); interview with cinematographer Raoul Coutard (2002); original theatrical trailer.
Summary:
On Capri, an Italian crew makes a German film of Homer's Odyssey; Fritz Lang directs with American money. Prokosch, the producer, with his sneer and red Alfa, holds art films in contempt and hires writer Javal to help Lang commercialize the picture. Against this backdrop, Javal's marriage to Camille, a young former typist, disintegrates. It opens with the couple talking in bed, she asking assurance that he finds her attractive. Later that day he introduces her to Prokosch, and, unawares, blunders unforgivably. The rest of the film portrays her, in their apartment and in public, expressing her hurt and change of heart and his slow grasp of the source of her contempt.
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