Occasionally, I like to tick off the movies I haven't yet seen from the Sight and Sound and Cahier Du Cinema lists of greatest films of all time (yes, I am that sad – what's it to you?).
Le Mepris is in 22nd and 15th place respectively. It is really deep.
Firstly it tells you that you are watching a movie, not real life.
Then we meet Michel Picolli, who is pretending to be a writer named Paul Javal and Brigitte Bardot, who is pretending to be his wife, Camille. Please note: these are characters in a movie, not real people.
Camille gets Paul to identify all the parts of her he likes. She asks:
"Do you prefer my breasts or my nipples?"
Faced with a question like that, most men would just get their coats and quietly leave. Here, it is the audience that should have taken the hint.
We learn that Paul has been hired to re-write Fritz Lang's picture of the Odyssey. Camille then gets into a pet because she thinks he has deliberately thrown her at the crass producer Prokosch (Jack Palance). She may be right, but since Paul has already got the job it is not clear what his motive might have been.
The middle stretch of the movie consists of a single thirty-minute scene (in long takes and frequently in long shot) in which the couple engage in one of those endless, circular, bickering arguments that are calculated to drive everybody mad.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing"
"Yes, there is"
"You know what's wrong"
"How could I, if you won't say?"
"Well, if you don't know, I can't tell you"
Finally it emerges that she no longer loves him and feels nothing but contempt (probably because of the Prokosch incident). They can't leave it at that:
"Why do you despise me?"
"You know why"
"No I don't"
Give me strength!
Eventually they go to Capri to make the Odyssey movie, where they continue to bicker until Camille decides to leave Paul and is killed in a car crash.
I nearly forgot, everybody talks about Nicholas Ray and Howard Hawks movies and they all swop quotations from Dante and Bertolt Brecht. Paul and Camille tell each other revealing fables about Ramakrishna and asses buying flying carpets.
Also, the music sometimes swells up so much that it almost drowns out the dialogue. Where was that swelling music during the argument scene when we needed it?
Finally, this masterpiece stops. At this point you realise you are 103 minutes nearer your own death which, curiously, seems to have lost some of its sting.
PS: Fritz Lang is both real and not real. I told you it was deep.
Le Mepris is in 22nd and 15th place respectively. It is really deep.
Firstly it tells you that you are watching a movie, not real life.
Then we meet Michel Picolli, who is pretending to be a writer named Paul Javal and Brigitte Bardot, who is pretending to be his wife, Camille. Please note: these are characters in a movie, not real people.
Camille gets Paul to identify all the parts of her he likes. She asks:
"Do you prefer my breasts or my nipples?"
Faced with a question like that, most men would just get their coats and quietly leave. Here, it is the audience that should have taken the hint.
We learn that Paul has been hired to re-write Fritz Lang's picture of the Odyssey. Camille then gets into a pet because she thinks he has deliberately thrown her at the crass producer Prokosch (Jack Palance). She may be right, but since Paul has already got the job it is not clear what his motive might have been.
The middle stretch of the movie consists of a single thirty-minute scene (in long takes and frequently in long shot) in which the couple engage in one of those endless, circular, bickering arguments that are calculated to drive everybody mad.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing"
"Yes, there is"
"You know what's wrong"
"How could I, if you won't say?"
"Well, if you don't know, I can't tell you"
Finally it emerges that she no longer loves him and feels nothing but contempt (probably because of the Prokosch incident). They can't leave it at that:
"Why do you despise me?"
"You know why"
"No I don't"
Give me strength!
Eventually they go to Capri to make the Odyssey movie, where they continue to bicker until Camille decides to leave Paul and is killed in a car crash.
I nearly forgot, everybody talks about Nicholas Ray and Howard Hawks movies and they all swop quotations from Dante and Bertolt Brecht. Paul and Camille tell each other revealing fables about Ramakrishna and asses buying flying carpets.
Also, the music sometimes swells up so much that it almost drowns out the dialogue. Where was that swelling music during the argument scene when we needed it?
Finally, this masterpiece stops. At this point you realise you are 103 minutes nearer your own death which, curiously, seems to have lost some of its sting.
PS: Fritz Lang is both real and not real. I told you it was deep.