To Praise 'Contempt'

While rummaging through a drawer in the 'junk room' the other day (you know, that room in your house that slowly accumulates piles upon piles of stuff until you just finally give up on ever cleaning it and declare it to be 'the junk room'; every home in America has one, I honestly believe) I came across one of the very first DVD's I ever bought, one that I had nearly forgotten about. It was the Criterion Collection's 2-disc release of Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 classic Contempt. I hadn't seen it in years, and I was so excited when it just sort of reappeared that I made some time for myself to sit down and watch it all over again. Now, I'm always hesitant to recommend movies to other people. Books are one thing - you will immediately weed out people who don't read by discussing a book. Movies are different. Everybody watches them, although most people, being idiots, tend to watch movies geared towards their idiocy. Contempt is a movie that a lot of people will not like, and a passionate few may even despise. It has little in the way of an active plot line. It moves at a pace that will torture the ADD generation (not that they don't deserve to be tortured in the most grisly manner possible anyway). It has the kind of 'arty' aesthetic that was a calling card of European movies of that era (and hell, maybe of all eras). And yet, watching it all over again I realized why I once called it my favorite movie ever. It is the most visual film imaginable; widescreen Technicolor portraits of paradise in Capri, Brigitte Bardot looking more majestic than she ever did before or after, cinematography that makes emphatically clear how far the standards of filmmaking have plummeted over the years. It's one of the very few films that ravish your eye without letup. I don't know if I'd bring this movie up in a casual conversation or not. In a way it's almost too special. But if you ever have the chance to see it (in its original aspect ratio, of course) sit still for a while and give it a chance. It is not a movie like other movies; Godard couldn't do that if he tried, and he probably did try at least a little with this one. What it is however is one of cinema's great testaments to a time when movies stood shoulder to shoulder with novels, art movements and noted intellectuals as harbingers of a living and at least somewhat healthy culture. It didn't last long, and it doesn't exist at all now, but for a while there was glory to behold indeed. Contempt was among the most glorious.