Contempt (Le mepris) [Sub: Eng]

Possibly Godard's most melancholy film and probably his most beautiful ...

What's the price of selling out? Contempt asks the question of its characters, its audience, and its own director.

Godard sets interesting scenes, with provocative color combinations and a suggestive pictorial flow. But out of it all comes nothing -- or very little that tells you why this wife is so contemptuous of her husband. Maybe he should be contemptuous of her!

Inevitably a melancholy film, but a memorable one as well.

Contempt was Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 attempt at a big-budget, big- star production, and more or less satisfied his curiosity.

It emerges as one of Godard's most emotional films.

The film is about nothing but cinema itself, which gets a bit wearing, unless you are one of those people who like watching a movie in order to check off the references to other movies. Still, it's a masterwork of some sort.

Few films have achieved such elegance.

Godard was the artist who tore cinema apart and rebuilt it to suit his own interests and ends.

If Le Mépris lacks the uninhibited character of, say, Breathless, Pierrot le Fou, or Alphaville it undoubtedly makes up for it in emotional potency.

If you want to know the cinema of Godard, then this is a great place to start.

Steeped in melancholy and a sense of mourning.