Le Mepris- Marriage is a bitch!

Those of us who love the work of Jean-Luc Godard are often in love more with what he does with the camera, sound, music and editing than we are with the actual dramatic storyline within his films. The dazzling tracking shots, severely constricted camera angles, rapid editing, long takes, and all of the disruptive cinematic techniques that we expect from the French New Wave, but are embodied within the work of Jean-Luc Godard over several decades. Le Mepris (Contempt -1963) presents us with multiple dramatic story lines presented as a self-reflexive document of a film about a film being produced. It is one of Godard's most supreme narrative achievements of his 1960's period. This complex story of a marriage in self-destruct mode carries within it Godard's most mature vivisection of the relationship of man to woman and woman to man seen from multiple perspectives. The classical perspective of man and woman is between the characters of Odysseus and Penelope in the version of the Odyssey being filmed within the film by Fritz Lang. The modern perspective is between Paul (Michel Piccoli) and Camille (Bridget Bardot). When disappointed American film producer Jerry Prokosh (Jack Palance) hires French screenwriter Paul Javal to come to Italy and re-write scenes for his film of the Odyssey, Jerry introduces a theory about the relationship between Odysseus and Penelope. He says," I think Penelope has been unfaithful." This modern change to Homer's text causes great discussion between Jerry, Fritz Lang and Paul. It is an attempt to bring an ancient text into modernity by violating the meaning and original design of the work. As Fritz Lang angrily told Paul," You either do Homer's Odyssey or you do nothing at all!" This attempt to bring The Odyssey into modernity by violating it is revealing of the changing roles of women and men in the sixties as juxtaposed to men and women (as property) in ancient times. Thus, when we get our intimate look at the 'real' relationship between Paul and Camille we are witnessing the emotional torment that these changing roles were exerting upon a marriage. Watching Le Mepris is like watching a train wreck in slow motion with the beautiful music of George Delerue consecrating the wreckage with blissful and yearning stings; a dirge for a marriage destroyed by modern times.
At the heart of Le Mepris is a dangerous game being played by a man and a woman upon each other. It started like this: Film producer Jerry Prokoch had heard that Paul's wife was beautiful and when he meets her he decides to take her back to his chateau in his two seater red sports car. When he asks if he can take her there, Paul says yes even though Camille does not like Jerry and doesn't want to go. From this moment, their marriage was doomed. Here Camille wants Paul to act chivalrously and protect her from Prokoch. She wants him to 'keep her close' to him by refusing to let Jerry drive her to the chateau without Paul. She wants Paul to treat her like his property; to play the old role of husband, owner, protector, provider. On the other hand, Paul, it seems, felt that if she truly loved him what did he have to fear for letting her go with Jerry to his chateau? After all, he was coming there by taxi and would arrive just a few minutes after them. Should Paul have really been worried that his wife would cheat on him with a sleazy American producer? If she really loved him what did he have to fear? Should Camille really have made such a big deal because Paul wouldn't do what she wanted him to do? Are not these the hypothetical questions that under grid every marriage in one way or another? Does not every woman want her freedom, but also to rattle the chains of her indentured heart in a relationship? Is not a man expected in some way to act like a man from the days of yore- up until a designated point? From that moment, that moment when Paul did not play the white knight- Camille lost respect for her husband and she tormented him exquisitely in that long, slow motion, domestic scene in their apartment. Paul pretends like he doesn't know why Camille is acting so bizarre. By the time he asks her," Was if because I sent you with Prokosh that day," it is too late. Indeed, Paul sends her off with Prokosh again when they are in Capri. Here, Camille makes sure to kiss Jerry so that Paul can see them. She has upped the ante, so to speak. But so has Paul, for earlier he had been caught patting the script girl/translator on the ass by Camille. The great power struggle between husband and wife plays out against the production of an epic film. In the apartment when Paul slaps Camille he does so because he knows she is making fun of him; he knows that he has lost her respect. But when Paul tries to man-handle her again, Camille strikes back him with a fusillade of blows about the head and chest. Before they go to Capri, Paul takes a gun with him. Things had gotten ugly. This power play is based upon what a woman expects from a man; she expects him to understand her whims and oblige them. Was Camille asking for the moon? No. She just didn't want to go with Jerry and she expected Paul to pick up on this and keep her close to him. It was a test of faith on both of their parts. Paul trusted her not to be unfaithful. A test that Paul failed and later Camille would intentionally flunk with disastrous results. These type of of games are played even today between men and women. Women want to be independent, feminist, but they still expect a man to be chivalrous and oblige their whims. But chivalry in and of itself requires that the women not be independent nor feminist; it requires that she submit to the will of the man. Oh sure there can be a kind of pragmatic truce between the two positions but one would have to know how to alternate (be chivalrous and allow her independence, be independent and allow him to feel chivalrous) but such a position is only temporary. There comes a point where it is either/or and not both. The marriage between Paul and Camille could not withstand the test.
One has to wonder how did Godard, whose previous dramatic work in male and female relationships was more juvenile and fetishistic (e.g. the child like questions in Breathless or the photo-interrogation in Le Petit Soldat), how did Godard know about this type of mature interrelationship between man and woman. Clearly, Le Mepris has many affinities with the real life relationship between Godard and Anna Karina. The choice to make more commercial films to support the bourgeois lifestyle that marriage strongly makes one conform towards was clearly weighing upon Godard in real life. That Godard had sent Karina off into the hands of another producer (the theatre) in Rivette's production of La Religiouse as he prepared to do Le Carabiniers and Le Mepris tells us something about where this self-destruction of a marriage was born. Many have noted that Piccoli as Paul wore a hat that was extremely similar to Godard's own hat. In fact during the Capri sequence when Fritz Lang is filming on the boat one can see Godard playing Fritz Lang's assistant director wearing almost exactly the same hat as Paul passes by him. In fact, if we consider a little more of Prokosh and Paul's theory of the Odyssey we find that both think that Odysseus stayed away from Penelope on a ten year journey because he was fed up with marriage; fed up with the bourgeois comfort and confines that closed him off from the world. That Godard went away to Italy to shoot Le Mepris (without Karina) reveals the source of the fictional detail, isn't it tantalizing to think? Le Mepris shows more than any of Godard's work one of the themes that was do linger through Pierrot Le Fou and even Weekend: Marriage is a bitch. One has to know how to play the game and adjust when it changes, sadly Paul and Camille/ Godard and Katrina could not.