The COARD II: Le Mepris, "Contempt" (1963)

Synopsis

Movie:  Le Mepris, or “Contempt” in English,

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Notable Characters:  Paul Javal, a playwright.  

                                   American producer

                                   German director

                                   Cute translator

                                   Camille

DISCLAIMER 1:  I can’t speak for Roy, but when I write a synopsis it will be written in my style and by my rules.  I PLAY BY MY OWN RULES.  I will however, try to make sure you, the reader, understand the plot well enough to read our review dialogue. - Cody  

DISCLAIMER 2:  This movie doesn’t have what you would call a traditional story line.  It is just a series of scenes showing people talking.  All we can do in our review is do our best to discuss the scenes we have to work with.  Bear with us on this one… - Cody

DISCLAIMER 3:  Avoid watching this movie if you are at all, in the least bit, sleepy. You may miss things because it’s in French, and it’s all subtitled. But honestly, you don’t miss too much. Reading everything they said in the movie doesn’t help you understand it any better. - Roy


Cody:  Le Mepris is a film centered around Paul Javal, a playwright. He has been hired by an American producer to “Hollywoodize” a film based on Homer’s The Odyssey.  A legendary German director is also along for the ride.  There is a cute translator who seemingly knows every language imaginable.  Finally, enter Javal’s BEAUTIFUL wife, Camille.  I capitalize “beautiful” because this movie spends an inordinate amount of time recognizing, stating, and discussing her physical appearance.  What can be loosely labeled as a plot, plays out in a limited number of scenes using what I would call “real time dialogue.”  As in, you see the entirety of a conversation beginning to end, regardless of length, relevance, or even the repetition of lines.  The central themes are a conflict between Javal and Camille and a conflict within Javal himself about “selling out” his snobby playwright beliefs to “pimp out” this classic Homer epic.  Basically these two separate conflicts play out across a few different settings where essentially nothing of any substance takes place.  I will now let Roy add anything else he thinks you need to know, as well as kick off our discussion.

Roy: I have nothing to add, except this movie is not as exciting as Cody made it sound. Onto the review!


Review

Roy: I would like to start this review by letting all of you catch a glimpse of how this movie started. Paul and his wife Camille are lying in bed. Here is the following exchange:

Camille: Do you like my feet?

Paul: Oui

Camille: Do you like my ankles?

Paul: Oui

Camille: Do you like my knees?

Paul: Oui

…...Aaaaannnnd five minutes in I would like to smother her with a pillow… and, by the way, I saved you people. Her questions went on for another three minutes ALL in the same vein.

Cody: The above statements by Roy are pretty much a microcosm of the entire film. I could let his remarks stand alone and they would be enough for an entire review.  However, I am far too interested in my own opinions to stop here. Seriously, Camille might be one of the most annoying movie characters I have seen, and I have seen A LOT of movies.  Something that needs our serious attention though is the scene between Paul and Camille in their apartment.  First of all, it is important to note that this movie is 102 minutes long and has exactly five different scenes.  The one in the apartment is the longest scene coming in at over thirty minutes of back and forth between Camille and Paul.  How many ways can you say “why don’t you love me anymore?”  Well, I don’t know the answer to that question, because Paul just uses that same exact wording over and over and over and over and over and…… 

Roy: I’ll tell you who else doesn’t know the answer to that question… Camille. She just kept saying “I do love you, no wait… I don’t. Um.. I don’t know.” The passive-aggressiveness rated off the charts. Also, is this how french people fight?? There is no yelling, no screaming, just asking the same question over and over, then they change the subject. Suddenly, out of nowhere Paul slaps Camille around. 173 hours later, after the same runaround, Camille starts hitting Paul. She runs out of the apartment, he grabs a gun and chases after her.

Cody: By the time we got through that apartment scene, I didn’t even care about Homer’s “The Odyssey” anymore.  Another thing about the French, (is this a stereotype?) their baths lasted approximately seventeen seconds each. 

Roy: Not to mention neither person used soap. Not kidding. Paul takes his clothes off, takes a bath, gets out and puts the same clothes back on and tells Camille “its ok, I didn’t use soap….” Um… wait? You just sat in warm dirty water because… you’re french? I don’t get it. 

Cody:  Clearly you can tell this movie dragged on and on, but it was not without merit.  Something that is really entertaining/funny about foreign films is the frequency with which they take stereotypes about Americans and pour nitro gas all over them. The American producer was comically arrogant to the point that his character is borderline not believable to be a real person.  I mean, he dismisses the cute translator like the French dismiss the prospect of a decent bath.  She only seamlessly translated between German, French, and English without blinking an eye, and she gets treated like every secretary in Mad Men. I am not saying Americans aren’t arrogant, but just….wow.

Roy: I get that Jean-Luc Godard wanted to bring up the cynical view that movies are killing art. Anytime art was talked about or shown in the movie it was glorified, and every reference to the evil producer and his evil plans for “The Odyssey” was viewed as evil and corrupt…. and evil. The movie ends with Camille leaving her husband Paul for the American producer, whom she hates, and they die when he wedges his car underneath a semi-truck.  Was Jean-Luc Godard trying to say something here? I don’t know. I’m only thankful it happened so the movie could end.

Cody:  What a completely bizarre ending too.  Camille just suddenly leaves Paul for the American whom she can hardly even communicate with?  I will tell you what I learned from that symbolism: Americans get everything they want. Every single time. Guaranteed.  The fact that he died at the end does nothing to change my mind.  Would you rather die rich and happy driving your slick sports car with a beautiful French woman next to you, or old, alone, and with your “dignity” in tact because you didn’t compromise your lame playwright values?  Give me the hot French chick and the semi-truck death every dang time.  ‘Merica.

Roy: We don’t get everything we want… We had to sit through this euro-trash film and wonder how this made the list of best 1,001 movies of all time.

Cody:  At least the score was kind of cool…. I guess?

Roy: For the first 45 minutes yeah…. But how do you write a single, five minute score for the entire movie?? 

Cody: The same way you write 15 original lines for a two hour movie… *sigh*… I’m not sure I can do this anymore….

Roy:  Wait…. what?? Cody….are we still friends?

Cody: Yes….. *passive aggressively staring out the window*

Roy: But Cody…..why aren’t we friends anymore?.... are we still friends?

Cody: I will admit nothing.

Roy: Cody…. I must know…. are we still friends?

Cody: How can you not know?  I have always been your friend.  But today….I changed my mind….for some reason….*overdramatically runs out of the room*

Fin

Roy: P.S. If this review confused you just be happy you didn’t watch the movie. We only stole seven minutes of your life. That movie stole 102 from us.

The COARD I: Jaws (1975)

DISCLAIMER: There will be spoilers in our articles. But seriously... If you’re upset because I’m the one who told you how Jaws ends you need help good sir or madam. Serious help.

Roy: Steven Spielberg directed Jaws and was immediately responsible for a particular aquatic phobia developing in millions of people. This fantastic film tells the story of a massive great white shark and how it terrorized a New England coastal town for a summer. Three men eventually embark on a quest to hunt down and kill the menace blah blah blah. Look unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last 39 years, you know the story. You’ve seen the famous scenes. Unfortunately, I think that most of us have watched these scenes over and over and feel like we have seen this movie a thousand times. Maybe you have, but I think there are many of us who have not sat down and experienced this brilliant film from beginning to end in a long time. If you fall into that category and are looking for something good to watch you could not make a better decision than Jaws.

Roy Scheider does a good job as Brody, but Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfus hand in spectacular performances as their characters. It was Quint who commands my favorite part of the movie. He tells the true story of the USS Indianapolis, and adds that he was one of the 317 survivors. Robert Shaw knocks this out of the park. That scene felt so real and made you understand why Quint was so strange. Why he was hell-bent on destroying this shark. It made you a little sad to see a man who survived the USS Indianapolis meet his end in the belly of a shark just 30 years later.

The impact this movie had on my generation is impossible to explain. My wife tells a great story about when she and her brothers would go swimming in the ocean as kids. One of her brothers became quite adept at pretending to be drug under by a shark like the poor young lady in the opening of the movie. To this day my wife can remember how upset she got when she saw him do this. We ALL have stories like this. That’s what makes this movie so wonderful. It’s not just the suspense and intensity and Brody fudging his pants as he’s chumming the water and sees the shark pop up out of nowhere. It’s how this movie grabbed all of us and became a permanent part of our lives. THIS is why I love movies. When done correctly, no other art-form can come close.

Cody:  Anytime there is a production company started based off of a line from your movie (that’s some bad hat Harry), you know you’ve made it.  We could just stop right there, but of course I won’t.  First of all, I think we all can admit that anytime we enter the ocean we are at least 36% sure that our day will end in those iconic bass notes and a bloody circle in the water.  I also think Jaws at least loosely spawned the Shark Week that we have all come to love.  This movie is, as Roy said, just the epitome of why we watch films.  

As Roy also said, there are multiple famous scenes here, and am I the only one that can’t believe how well this movie holds up almost 40 years later?  Even that giant rubber shark doesn’t look half bad.  Did you notice all the foreshadowing about the eventual exploding fish using the air tank? Spielberg must have thrown us 10 hints in there.  I am not sure why this is relevant, but it is something I felt like throwing out there just to mull over.  The penultimate shot of the movie of Brody laying horizontal on the mast of the ship basking in the sunlight and the stink of his exploded foe is just excellent movie making.  We are about to watch 1,001 movies together; which, if you’re doing the math at home, means we had a literal crap ton of movies we could have started this journey with.  Is Jaws the best movie of all time?  No.  Is it the best movie we could have started with?  You could make an argument for that.

Well, needless to say, I am not going anywhere near water anytime soon.  I would write more on our toothy friend, but I would need a bigger boat. *rim shot*

Roy: I will just be content to not swim in the ocean with gross old men who forgot their bro at home...

Cody: It’s a manzier!

The COARD: Prologue

Cody Potter:

This is going to be our first blog post on The Cinematic Odyssey: A Running Diary.  The format of this post, and every subsequent post, will be a back and forth discussion between myself and Roy Johnson.  This feat we are about to undertake is something that is both right up our alley and more absurd than anything we have ever done.  We regularly have ideas that most would describe as somewhere between quirky and asinine.  The thing is, we actually go through with a lot of these ideas, and we absolutely have a ton of fun along the way.  This time around we are trying something different; we are going to attempt to share the fun and the journey with others via this online blog.  We usually aren't much for credit, but this was Roy’s idea from the beginning.  I will let him explain what we have gotten ourselves into here.

Roy Johnson:

As these things usually go it was quite an organic situation. We both saw the same YouTube clip that was inspired by the book 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. From there it snowballed rather quickly. Within minutes we were both on Amazon looking for this book. Within hours we both had purchased the book. Within a few more hours we decided we would watch every movie on this list. The plan quickly formed from there. We made a spreadsheet with every movie title from the book, randomized the list, and were immediately intimidated at the scope of our ambition. However we were also extremely excited about this too, and as much as I would like to take credit for this blog, sadly I cannot. That belongs to one Lauren Rudichuck, who is a mutual friend of mine and Cody’s. Lauren, along with my wife, hold a special place in our lives. As Cody and I fill them in on our schemes they shake their heads as they find themselves stuck somewhere between amazement and pity. As I showed Lauren our spreadsheet she said, “This is CRAZY. I wanna watch some of these with you guys, but I am NOT watching a thousand movies…. I would however really like to read about you two watching a thousand movies. You should blog this!” I immediately called Cody and we agreed this was would be a vital part to the COARD experience. This allows us to record our thoughts and feelings about all of these films. So as Cody said, we figured the best way to blog this experience is to record our conversation about each movie. One of us will email the other and the back and forth will be posted. Please understand. We are not Wesley Morris, we are not Siskel and Eibert, we are not even Ebert and Roeper. We are Roy and Cody. Two guys who love movies and have decided to spend the next decade of their lives or more slowly going through a comprehensive list of important films. These reviews will be from your average movie fan and will be written from that perspective. There is an old question, How do you eat an elephant? The answer is one bite at a time. This COARD experience is our elephant, and we will conquer our elephant one movie at a time.

PS. My wife deserves a medal for supporting me in my quest for greatness by not allowing me to have the same fate as that of Michael Corleone at the end of The Godfather: Part III Who slumps over in his wheelchair and dies. Alone.