Contempt (1963)

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Brigitte Bardot, Fritz Lang

Godard’s masterpiece pays homage to many things. Art films: it’s an expensive New Wave movie about making a studio-funded art movie. Tracking shots: the opening credits show one being filmed, and thereafter most shots track. Frenchness: brilliant reds and blues fill the mise-en-scene – especially in Film Forum’s new print. Brigitte Bardot: her beauty and presence bewitch the director, his cast and the audience.

This review appears in the March 12 issue of The L Magazine.