Le Mepris (Contempt) - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Le Mepris (Contempt)



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:



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Movie
Jean-Luc Godard has always been an acquired taste of a film maker. He was an auteur of the French art house films of the 1960s and 1970s, and still manages to entertain audiences with his shorts to this day. Back in the day Le Mepris was seen as his “selling out” film. A movie that was about movie making, but also strayed from the non linear story telling of his previous films such as Breathless or The Little Soldier, and critics were a bit torn up about the film. On one side it was a fascinating look at the world of film making as told through the eyes of marital strife, but on the other hand it was not nearly so whimsical or heady as what people were expecting of Godard at the time. Stanley Kauffmann’s review even went so far as to make the famous statement that “the only people interested in Le Mepris were those interested in Brigitte Bardot’s rear end”. But, as time goes on, the cult following grows, and many have seen the inherent beauty of Godard’s crumbling marital masterpiece.

The film starts out with young and in love couple Camille (Brigitte Bardot) and Paul (Michel Piccoli) lying in bed professing just how much they love each other. The two are madly in love, with Camille having given up her job as a typist so that Michel could get into writing screenplays instead of his crime novels. However, their world gets turned upside down when bullish American film maker Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) hires Michel to sort of “spruce up” a film that he’s working on with Fritz Lang (actually played by Fritz Lang himself). Jeremy is the epitome of a rude gross American, forcing his way onto Fritz Lang like a bull in a china shop, and uses Michel to tweak and doctor up a script to get it the way he wants so he doesn’t have to work with Fritz as much.

The end of Camille and Paul’s marriage begins with the day that Camille is introduced to Jeremy. The lascivious American obviously has his eye on Camille, and Paul seems a little too mewling and willing to kow tow to the American which starts to turn Camille off to her husband. As the film goes on Camille begins to withdraw from her husband, treating him with utter contempt as the poor guy struggles to figure out what’s going on. It’s not until it’s too late that it’s revealed that Camille basically has fallen out of love with her husband as she’s slowly realized that Paul is less of a “man” than she wants.

The actual unraveling of Paul and Camille’s marriage is meant to evoke a certain set of emotions, rather than make logical sense. Set up as an allegory of how film making can completely consume and alter your life, their marriage is the sacrificial lamb that shows just HOW MUCH it can consume one. Paul can’t see the forest for all of the trees, sacrificing everything that makes him HIM in order to chase after the money that Jeremy and his American money offers, while Camille is repulsed by what he’s becoming. Whether any of that makes sense from a typical narrative structure (it seems silly to modern audiences), is beside the point. The very point of the film is to FEEL what’s going on. To watch with horror and depression as you see everything falling apart until there is nothing left.

Le Mepris is told through an incredible array of varying methods, ranging from the told story line of Paul and Camille, to Godard’s wonderful use of visual aids, color grading, and even positioning of the camera to elicit an emotion. However, all of this comes at a price. And that price is the general audience. Le Mepris is one of Godard’s more generally accessible films for the “unwashed masses” (so to speak), but it is still a very arts fartsy film that really appeals to arthouse and French movie goers rather than the Joe and his wife heading out to the movies. In that respect Le Mepris will not appeal to everyone, but I have ALWAYS highly recommended this one to those looking to dip their toes in to Jean-Luc Godard’s arsenal of films.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




4K Video: Video:

The film’s opening title card gives some information (quoted below) to showcase how badly the original source elements damaged, and what lengths Studio Canal had to go through in order to restore the film to what we see today

“The film was restored and digitalized in 4K by StudioCanal from 2021 to 2023 at Hiventy with support from the CNC. In order to optimize the 4K restoration, the original 35mm negative and scenes from the interpositive were used along with the reference print reworked in 2002 by Mr. Raoul Coutard, the film's director of photography. The previous digital versions showed a lack of detail in high and low light. Furthermore, the colors deviated from the director's specifications. Thanks to documented information, the original contrasts, details and saturation were restored. The project was supervised by the StudioCanal team, Sophie Boyer and Jean-Pierre Bolget.”

The difference between my old 2010 Blu-ray and this 4K UHD disc are staggering in comparison. The old Blu-ray was poorly color timed, with reds slanting heavily towards orange (the difference between the garish orange car in the Blu-ray and the bright red sports car seen in the 4K UHD disc is just jaw dropping), and skin tones tend to be all over the place. The compression artifacts on the Blu-ray were also way out of control as well. Grain was inconsistent and the detail levels rather smushy. Back in the day it was an OK transfer, but by modern encodes it doesn’t even hold a candle to the new 4K disc. There are some oddities here and there in the new 4K encode, with some scenes showing more grain or detail levels than others, but overall this is a massive upgrade over the old disc. Just check out the opening scene where the filter goes from red, to white, to a blue filter while Paul and Camille are talking in bed. The old disc’s blue filter looked pixelated and nasty, while in the 4K disc that artifacting is COMPLETELY gone (for the most part, that blue filter looks a tad weird). The HDR application adds depth and pop to the primary colors (the red of Jeremy’s car, the yellow of Camille’s jacket etc) that really shines without being garish and overly blasted out like the Blu-ray. The coming together of this 4K disc may not be perfect, but it is so much of an upgrade over the 2010 disc that I was literally in hog heaven.








Audio:

Judging by my ears, the new DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono tracks in both English and French (they omitted the Spanish and German DTS-HD MA Mono tracks from the Blu-ray) sound identical to the previous Blu-ray, which is not a bad thing. The audio mixes are quite robust and healthy, with a strong presence in the front of the room with the score, and decent dialog. There’s still some minor “hollowness” to the voices that has been around since forever, but there’s no signs of major hiss, audio artifacting, or anything else that could take away from the audio experience. It’s a mono mix, and quite good, even by today’s standards.












Extras:

• Introduction by Colin MacCabe

Final Score: ​

While Le Mepris is a huge step forward in the video department, I was a bit disappointed in Lionsgate’s approach to the extras. This is a film that literally gains more context with the fantastic set of extras that the 2010 Lionsgate Blu-ray afforded, and all but the introduction have been eliminated for this 4K UHD release. Not to mention the Blu-ray isn’t included in a combo pack sort of setup to facilitate those extras. As is, the release is amazing in technical qualities and the production itself, but those missing extras are a sore sport of cinemaphiles looking to pick up the release. Luckily Amazon has an exclusive bundle that includes the Blu-ray in it as well, but the regular 4K UHD release is sans the Blu-ray and those wonderful special features. Either way, the new 4K remaster looks gorgeous in comparison to the aging and poorly color timed Blu-ray, and the film itself is a treat. Highly recommended.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance, Michel Piccoli, Fritz Lang, Gieorgia Moll
Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard
Written by: Alberto Moravia, Jean-Luc Godard
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 HEVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono, French DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono
Subtitles: English SDH,
Studio: Lionsgate
Rated: NR
Runtime: 103 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: October 24th, 2023

Recommendation: Great Film

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I have not seen Brigitte Bardot films so I will have to check this one and others out.