Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26696 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-01-26
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English, French, German, Italian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 99 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Starring Brigitte Bardot, then at the height of her fame, and Michel Piccoli as a married couple tearing the last strips off a failing marriage, Le Mépris is both one of Jean-Luc Godard's most accessible films and perhaps his most excoriating and emotionally raw. Godard and his regular cinematographer Raoul Coutard (lensman for most of the greatest films of the New Wave) splashed out the budget for this international co-production on Bardot's salary and gorgeous CinemaScope photography to capture the Italian setting's intense beauty, bright as a knife.

The nominal story concerns the film production of an adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, on which Piccoli is the scriptwriter, much to the disgust of his wife Camille (Bardot) who preferred life when he merely wrote novels. Hired by Jack Palance's swaggering American producer to adapt the Greek epic for a film to be directed by the august Fritz Lang (director of M, here playing himself), Paul inadvertently sets in motion the elements which will unravel his marriage, earning his wife's contempt (the closest translation of the French word "mépris"). Soon, the tenderness of the film's opening sequence--wherein they loll naked on a bed as she coquettishly solicits his approval of each of her body parts--gives way to harrowing bickering, the meat of film's central 35-minute scene which will induce pained winces in anyone who has ever been through a bitter split-up. If that sounds harrowing, be reassured that Le Mépris is not without its lighter moments and joys: Godard's trademarked musings on the nature of cinema, Bardot looking exquisitely chic in a selection of soigné little outfits, Lang bemusedly quoting the German poet Hölderlin and Bertolt Brecht. As mannered as the New Wave posturings now seem, Le Mépris still looks unbeatably stylish, its themes as eternal as Homer and the Capri landscape. --Leslie Felperin

Special Features

• Documentary Bardot & Godard (8 mins)
  
• Documentary Paparazzi (21 mins)
  
• Original theatrical trailer

DVD Technical Information:

• Running Time: 99 minutes
  
• Region Code: 2
  
• Subtitles: English

Synopsis
Widely acknowledged as a classic, LE MEPRIS is the story of Paul, a writer, and Camille, a couple in a tempestuous marriage. When Paul accepts a job to review a big screen version of Homer's Odyssey, the arguments over how the script should turn out mirror the arguments in Paul's relationship.

Customer Reviews

Fascinating film
"Le Mepris" is another superb Godard movie. It tells the story of the marital difficulties of a scriptwriter (Piccoli) and his typist wife (Bardot) as Piccoli's involvement in the filming of Homer's "Odyssey" (directed by Fritz Lang) causes friction between the pair.The film starts off with the couple very much in love, but a perceived slight by Piccoli on his wife and a flirtation by him with the film producer's female assistant him act as the catalyst for the unhinging of their relationship.

"Le Mepris" is filmed exquisitely; its colours are vivid , the mood languid and pensive , the soundtrack haunting. Like in "Au Bout de Souffle", Godard's female lead is capricious and mysterious,beautiful but dangerous. She turns a minor display of indifference by her husband into a marital make or break ,much to his surprise. However as the film unravels ,we see that the harmony and tenderness of the couple in the opening scenes disguises fundamental shifts in the balance of their relationship. Piccoli has a sharper intellect and more ambition than Bardot and she feels he is leaving her behind, only her physical beauty appealing to him. She wants to bring things to a head, restore the marital equilibrium in some way ; Piccoli is merely bemused at her sudden coldness to him.

The viewer never quite knows whether the marital problems are down to Piccoli's insensitivity or Bardot's irrationality, in the same way as the subplot of the filming of the "Odyssey" leads to debate about whether either Odysseus or Penelope were secretly fed up with each other despite appearances to the contrary on the surface and who was most to blame.

An enjoyable film which has much to say about the fickleness of modern relationships and Bardot's portrayal of a selfish,cold bitch/ strong ,liberated woman (delete as appropriate) was ahead of its time by several decades.

incredibly powerful and striking
The striking red-yellow-blue colours of this film frame a harrowing, enigmatic narrative which refuses to be reduced by simple explanations. The (predominantly male) eye of the camera tenderly takes apart Brigitte Bardot's beautiful body, the female object to be looked-at. But as communication breaks down in Camille and her scriptwriter husband's marriage, woman becomes subject and man becomes object - the object of contempt. Camilles's silences, that is what she refuses to explain to her husband, is her power, so her contempt for him is never explicitly explained in the film, leaving the spectator's mind to go over and over the sparse dialogue. In the idyllic Italian landscape, with its azure sea, the story of the Odyssey is made to resonate painfully with the tragedy of a perfect love turned irrevocably sour. There's no doubt that this is a sad film, and its rather dated style may seem strange to the modern eye, but it is still incredibly powerful and striking. This wonderful film won't leave your memory quickly.

quite simply, le mepris is it's own work of art
contrary to some of the above reviews, this is not a particularly accessible film and listening to the feedback of the 100 people who recently watched it with me is not necessarily for regular film buffs.

Some shots are painfully long and much of the narrative is shot in real time, so you may find it a bit slow, boring and after the finality of the death of the central female protagonist, you might feel pretty depressed! however, because godard is so occupied with making you as an audience work hard to unravel what's going on in the minds of the central characters, you might like that it's refreshingly challenging. its the kind of film that makes you realise how commercial hollywood cinema (something godard demonstrably disapproves of in le mepris) has a tendancy to lull you into the story and dictates to you how to interpret scenes and characters.

for those of you who seriously adore french new wave cinema, this is by no means a film that's easy to review and i can't begin to communicate how relevant and innovative a film this is. there are so many intrinsically placed themes that run alongside the production of the odyssey, the death of cinema as an art form, the breakdown of a marriage, the misuse of love and morality, the parallels between reality and fantasy...quite simply the film is its own work of art.