A Film and its Era: Le Mépris (Contempt) (Jean-Luc Godard)

Jean-Luc Godard directs “Contempt” in 1963. Portrait of a film: Brigitte Bardot, who is at the time one of cinema’s global icons, shares the lead in the film with Fritz Lang who plays himself, a creator of movies. The film blends two ruptures: that of a young woman and her screenwriter husband, and that of the German director and the American producer. Portrait of an era : while television thrives, the number of films diminishes, movie theaters close and cinema traverses an existential crisis. The early 1960s is the only time of the century where Hollywood does not dominate movies. For Jean-Luc Godard, it is the end of a cinema that he loved passionately. Portrait of a director : the couple formed by the visionary of the Nouvelle Vague and Anna Karina drifts from one crisis to the next : these scenes inspire the movement of “Contempt” from misunderstandings, to the final breaking point.