Ray Pride

While it's nice to see behind-the-scenes footage of the shooting of Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 "Contempt" ("Le mepris") and a new interview with cinematographer Raoul Coutard among other features in a two-DVD edition, the great gift is the film itself. It remains a revelation, a shockingly accessible masterpiece amid Godard's sometimes-difficult canon. Michel Piccoli plays Paul Javal, a playwright who needs money, and the producer Prokosch is embodied by Jack Palance, that heavy among heavies. He's waving a packet of cash in Paul's direction to doctor a script of "The Odyssey" being directed by Fritz Lang. "I like gods," Palance purrs, "I like them very much." While "Contempt" plays out over a long Italian weekend, climaxing at Malaparte, an architectural marvel of a villa at Capri, it is also a romantic epic, the abiding, naked pain of its characters washing away all the intellectualizing. Paul's beautiful young wife is Camille, played with momentous petulance by Brigitte Bardot. Paul asks whether he should write the script. Camille tells him it's fine. Later she feels he hasn't shown enough concern when Prokosch has been forward with her. No matter what Paul does, it will not be enough. Camille seizes on excuses, any excuses, to dismiss Paul's adoration. She remembers the love she once thought they had: "Everything used to happen instinctively, in complicitous ecstasy." In his screenplay, Godard wrote, "In contrast to Paul, who always acts on the strength of a complicated series of rationalizations, Camille acts nonpsychologically.... Though one might wonder about her, as Paul does, she never wonders about herself. "She lives full and simple sentiments, and cannot imagine analyzing them. At the end, the camera looks out onto the ocean, the horizon. Limitless possibility or infinite distance? The space between you and I, the space between a man, a woman. The sparkling azure of the sea is the crashing gulf between them. It is unfathomably huge.

"Contempt" is available on Criterion DVD. (2002-12-04)

Also by Ray Pride

Turn into the slide
A few years back, I'd been seeing someone for a while. We weren't getting along. I needed to leave Chicago, even if it meant going with her. We packed the car and after the afternoon rush hour passed, started to drive out of the city to the South.
(2002-11-26)

Perfectly mediocre
At the age of 40, James Bond's in the midst of a colorful midlife crisis, but at least in "Die Another Day," partner-in-smirk Halle Berry can hold her own against Pierce Brosnan's increasingly craggy demeanor.
(2002-11-20)

Tip of the Week
"Quitting," Zhang Yang's third feature (following "Shower"), is bold, impassioned and vivid in its portrayal of a damaged life brought back to health.
(2002-11-13)

Imitation of Life
"Far From Heaven" is a miracle, an unlikely proof of Borges' unflappably wry short story, "Pierre Menard, the Author of Quixote," in which his driven protagonist attempts to write Cervantes' "Don Quixote" word for word in the modern age.
(2002-11-13)

Tip of the Week
(2002-11-06)

Purty mouth
(2002-11-06)

Tip of the Week
(2002-10-30)

Spy-eyed
(2002-10-30)

Tip of the Week
(2002-10-23)

Nice picture
(2002-10-23)

Tip of the Week
(2002-10-16)

Anger mismanagement
(2002-10-16)

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