Cinemascope in CONTEMPT
Contempt • 12m
Having explored Jean-Luc Godard’s iconoclastic use of the boxy 4:3 aspect ratio in VIVRE SA VIE in the previous edition of Observations on Film Art, Professor David Bordwell here breaks down the French New Wave renegade’s equally experimental use of the elongated CinemaScope frame in another of his 1960s masterpieces, CONTEMPT. While in VIVRE SA VIE Godard used the square frame to craft an intensely up-close portrait of a woman, in CONTEMPT—a study of a marriage in breakdown spectacularly set against the coast of Italy—he pushed the aesthetic possibilities of CinemaScope to their limits, creating a work that is as much about landscape and environment as it is about human beings.
Up Next in Contempt
-
“Cinéastes de notre temps”: Fritz Lan...
This conversation between CONTEMPT director Jean-Luc Godard and filmmaker Fritz Lang was released in 1967. It was part of the “Cinéastes de notre temps” series produced by André S. Labarthe.
-
Encounter with Fritz Lang
Director Peter Fleischmann filmed the following meeting on location in Capri during the making of CONTEMPT. It premiered at the Oberhausen Film Festival in 1964.
-
Bardot et Godard
This short film by Jacques Rozier was filmed on the set of CONTEMPT.
