Sightlines · reception
How Contempt was received
1963 · Jean-Luc Godard · Contempt on Sightlines
The arc
In 1963 it was widely read as Godard's compromised 'big-budget' picture — a star vehicle awkwardly saddled with Brigitte Bardot — and reviews were mixed. Its 1997 restoration and rerelease sealed the reversal: it's now routinely called one of Godard's supreme achievements, with critic Colin MacCabe famously dubbing it 'the greatest work of art produced in post-war Europe.'
What’s debated
The perennial fight: is this the ideal entry point where Godard is at his most emotionally direct, or a gorgeous, glacial film about filmmaking that only lands if you already care about Godard?
Its footprint
Georges Delerue's aching 'Camille' theme has a whole second life — Scorsese lifted it for Casino — and the images of Casa Malaparte's rooftop on Capri and Bardot in that blue-shuttered apartment are among the most referenced in all of cinephilia. Fritz Lang's on-screen quip that CinemaScope is only good for 'snakes and funerals' gets endlessly quoted.
Where it stands
A cornerstone of the art-house canon and a Letterboxd favorite for its colors alone — the consensus 'accessible Godard' that even Godard skeptics tend to allow.
Did you know? Producers Joseph E. Levine and Carlo Ponti, having paid a fortune for Bardot, demanded more of her body on screen — so Godard added the now-iconic opening bedroom scene after the fact, turning the demand into a wry inventory of Bardot's anatomy.
Named by the director
- Voyage to Italy (1954) — Godard acknowledged Rossellini's film as the model for a marriage disintegrating on an Italian journey — and hangs its poster in Contempt itself.