DINO, BARDOT & LE MEPRIS

There was a unique moment in time when European Cinema converged with the technicolor melodramas of 1950's Hollywood and created something truly special, never to be repeated.

That moment was 1963 when Jean Luc Godard released his iconic movie Le Mepris.

The film, which is part meta film-autobiography of Godard's own creative existential angst and personal trevails with Hollywood, part homage to Hollywood itself and part re-telling of Greek mythology stands alone in its hybrid originality and above all else, creates a rarified cinematic atmosphere that secures its place in my own personal top 10 of films which possess that elusive magic.

Of course, the militant Godard fans might consider it a lesser effort to his more overtly original and provocative films such as À Bout De Souffle (1960), Pierrot Le Fou (1965) and La Chinoise (1967) but for me, there's just something about this love/hate letter to Hollywood in Le Mepris that stands above the rest. Plus, it has to be easily Godard's most sensual film, most probably due to the casting of Brigitte Bardot at her most radiant, accompanied by that haunting musical theme by composer George Delerue which epitomises the dreamy, ghostly melancholy of the Cinecittá studio era.

And bringing it closer to my own cultural neck of the woods, the character of screenwriter Paul (Michel Piccoli) pays homage to my favourite Frank Sinatra movie Some Came Running (1958) by superficially adopting the attitude of Dean Martin's character Bama in the film with his breezy, casually masculine approach to life. Of course, for Paul this belies his internal angst throughout the film as he faces losing his partner Camille (Bardot) to the slyly predatory film producer Jeremy Prokosh (Jack Palance) whilst filming The Odyssey in Capri under the direction of Fritz Lang who plays Fritz Lang.

Post WWII in America there was an existential concern about the role of men in society after a world war. This feeling permeated films such as William Wyler's The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946) and the novels of James Jones (From Here To Eternity, The Thin Red Line and Some Came Running) and somehow ended up finding a shared affinity with the French existential tradition in literature and cinema.

By the time the New Wave boys such as Godard, Truffaut and Resnais rolled around, there was a combination of irreverence and homage paid to the influence of American culture in France and Europe and culminated for me with the most intimately entwined cultural crossover in Le Mepris which is maybe why I keep returning to it above all the other European films of that era. It has a poetry to it, even with all of its self-knowing meta box of tricks and captures the sadness of dreams (both romantic and Hollywood) as well as the seduction of cinema over its audience.

Learning today of Jean Luc Godard's death, I felt it appropriate to express my gratitude for his portion of cinema history and my frequent enjoyment of his fresh, some might say revolutionary, take on defying narrative and film making rules.

After all, rules were meant to be broken.

Rest in Peace Jean Luc Godard 1930 - 2022