CONTEMPT: Drama. Starring Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance and
Fritz Lang. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. (Not rated. 103 minutes. In
English, French and Italian, with subtitles. At the Castro today through
August 28; August 15-18 at the Lark Theatre, Larkspur; and August 22-28 at
the UC Theater, Berkeley.)
Brigitte Bardot has been an icon of pop culture for so long that it’s hard to
remember that she barely made any decent movies. Roger Vadim’s “And God
Created Woman” put her on the map, but aside from that there’s little that
the former sex kitten, who claims to have hated her film career, could point
to with pride.
Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt,” which opens today at the Castro Theatre
and the Lark in Larkspur, is probably her best film, but was out of
circulation for most of the 34 years since it was made. Now, thanks to
Martin Scorsese, who championed its rerelease, and San Francisco’s Marcus
Hu, whose Strand Releasing is distributing it, the hypnotic, sad
“Contempt” is back.
Adapted from Alberto Moravia’s novel “A Ghost at Noon,” “Contempt”
stars Bardot as Camille, the wife of a playwright named Paul (Michel
Piccoli) whose idealism is matched by his thin bank account. When a vulgar
American film producer, played with hammy gusto by Jack Palance, offers him
a script-doctoring job, Paul goes to Rome’s Cinecitta Studios to meet the
Hollywood devil.
The film-inside-the-film is a retelling of Homer’s “The Odyssey” and
Palance is at loggerheads with the director, played by German director Fritz
Lang. Lang, who plays himself, wants to capture the classic beauty of
ancient Greece; Palance, an ogre given to tossing film cans against the
screening-room wall, wants a love story with busty mermaids.
A melancholic riff on the fragility of love, and simultaneously a
critique on the superficial nature of commercial cinema, “Contempt” takes
us back to the nouvelle vague —
when European auteurs were planting cerebral land mines on cinematic
landscapes, and finding ways to combine the sensuality and lyricism of film
with intellectual debate.
Piccoli is the wedge that Palance needs to wrest power from Lang. Bardot
sees all that and when Piccoli succumbs, and even makes a subtle effort to
pimp his wife to the American wolf, Bardot’s love erodes — and contempt
sets in. There’s a remarkable 30-
minute sequence in which Bardot pouts, accuses and relents, puts on a brown
wig and takes it off, switches from sullen to tender — and we see their
relationship fracture like frames in time-lapse photography. As Piccoli
betrays his own integrity we see the simultaneous betrayal of idealism and
art to commercial expediency.
The notion of an art film starring Bardot, Palance and Piccoli is
intriguing — but “Contempt” is really without category. It takes its
artistic agenda seriously, but also luxuriates in the sensuality and
plasticity of film images. Cinematographer Raoul Coutard captures luscious
images in Rome and the island of Capri and veteran composer Georges Delerue
underscores the collapse of love with rich, almost florid music.
On a simpler level, “Contempt” is a celebration of Bardot, one of the
great screen voluptuaries. We’re so accustomed to hearing about Bardot’s
animal-rights crusades and personal excesses that we forget what an
intoxicating goddess she used to be. Godard captures her extraordinary plush
beauty — you’ll gasp as she scissor-kicks nude through the water — but he
also gives her the chance to demonstrate her talent and intelligence.
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Night Moves is a paradox: a suspenseless suspenser, very well cast with players who lend sustained intrigue to largely synthetic repertory characters.
Minor LA detective Hackman, hired by faded actress Janet Ward to find runaway teenage daughter Melanie Griffith, becomes enmeshed in the Florida smuggling operations of John Crawford (Griffith’s stepfather), whose classy mistress Jennifer Warren indirectly helps Hackman’s own reconciliation with wife Clark, herself dallying out of loneliness with Harris Yulin. Stuntmen Edward Binns and Anthony Costello, and mechanic Woods, provide a link between the Hollywood and Florida environments.
Far more meritorious than the play are the players. Hackman works well with everyone. ![]()
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| “An inspired work.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Terry Zwigoff’ (”Ghost World”/”Bad Santa”/”Crumb”) misanthropic,
confrontational satire on the art scene is an inspired work based on the
comic book story Eightball by Daniel Clowes (studied art at Pratt Institute
in Brooklyn). The uneven comedy gets lost in too many ideas and in all
its subplots that include a murder mystery, a cartoonish depiction of an
art school, the travails of a young artist who aspires to be the next Picasso
and the depiction of the art world as being in bed with the business world.
The pompous, self-important targets the filmmaker aims for are as easy
to get as shooting ducks in the pond. Also the hero is not a very likable
fellow who displays little sensitivity, little integrity, mucho naivety
and lots of ambition, which makes it hard to sympathize with him when things
break wrong. The sour Zwigoff takes cheap shots at everyone and reduces
everyone to a bad cliché, but fails to take shots at his wiseass
protagonist (alter ego of Clowes) that get to the bone. But the cruel humor
has some zip, as it’s delivered with conviction and zeal. It comes to the
dismal conclusion that the art world scene is for the nerds and assholes
to get revenge on the bullies.
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Warning: spoiler in the next paragraph.
In his suburban school days the bland and nerdy Jerome Platz (Max
Minghella, son of the noted director Anthony Minghella) is picked on by
the school bullies and rejected by the hot babes, but aspires to be the
greatest artist of the 21st century and thereby score the most beautiful
chicks. Talented in drawing, he attends a fictional art school in Manhattan
called Strathmore Institute and lives in the dorm with insensitive and
uncommunicative roommates, the obnoxious aspiring filmmaker Vince (Ethan
Suplee) and the still in the closet fashion designer major Matthew (Nick
Swardson). Jerome’s naturalistic portrait of model Audrey (Sophia Myles),
the girl of his dreams and the nude model on the school brochure that lured
him to attend, is not appreciated by his mediocre fellow students andhis
poseur, self-promoting art teacher Professor Sandiford (Professor
Sandiford) who can’t tell the difference between the schlock and the more
proficiently technical art. The teachers are viewed as careerist losers
who teach because their art work sucks. Sandiford draws triangles for the
last 25 years that don’t sell, Professor Okamura (Jack Ong) tells his students
he doesn’t care if they attend his class and another art history professor
(Anjelica Huston) relies on her dignity to get over while she delivers
banal lectures. Through another sour student named Bardo (Joel David Moore),
who childishly breaks everyone down to fit a certain mold and is given
to popping off with gross remarks such as “this school is like a pussy
buffet,” Jerome is introduced to an older embittered alcoholic–a former
Strathmore student named Jimmy (Jim Broadbent). The failed artist lives
in a tenement in the nearby slum and it soon becomes easy to figure out
he’s the strangler the police are looking for after a number of random
killings on the campus, but the self-absorbed Jerome is too blind to notice
that and obtains the derelict’s paintings so he can win over Audrey, his
objet d’art, from the handsome square looking joe named Jonah (Matt Keeslar).
He’s a married undercover cop posing as an art student who has won the
model over with his looks and has won the art class over with his seductive
lesser art pieces, while they reject Jerome’s more accomplished work. By
the end Jerome sells his soul and loses his identity to win over the narcissistic
and fickle Audrey and gain recognition through notoriety, as he turns in
Jimmy’s violent paintings of the murders as his own and is happy as a lark
that his career has taken off once jailed as the strangler.
It was messy, crass and bleak, but it was very funny in spots, as
the film was not compromised and it had a self-confident bitter air of
speaking as the voice of truth (though I can hardly agree with the film’s
overly simplified notion that the main reason one becomes an artist is
to get even with bullies and score chicks, which sounds like sour grapes)
as it was thumbing its nose at all the frauds that pose as artist, the
students and teachers who use art to have a safe career and the opportunists
who despite their limited talent get to the top because they know who to
blow or just luck out and hit on something that’s hot. In the end, Zwigoff
makes a rather interesting point when it’s revealed that the American public
has a greater appreciation for a serial killer than an artist. The strange
thing about that viewpoint is that it might be true and all the bile spilled
here about the pretentiousness of the art world might also be true, even
if the film is awkward and not completely fair the way it puts forth its
arguments. I would still rather see a flawed film like this one that tries
to say something that is provocative than a safe and better made film that
has no intention of ruffling the feathers of the public. ![]()
|
If you thought Akira was strange, violent and hard to understand, get a care of this fervent perform, based on the witty available in translation from specialist shops. Like many Japanese manga, it’s overrule in a barren, mail-apocalyptic world where no more than men’s muscles can plant. The plot is the shop-worn fantasy rubbish about fraternal betrayal and maiden-rescuing; but what distinguishes it is the stylised visuals, the existentialist landscapes, and the quite exceptional levels of murderousness a harm perpetrated by the pugnacious arts supermen. Heads swell out and explode, arms fall to the establish, blood gushes skywards, torsos are severed, bodies are crushed to pulp. If Sam Peckinpah had murdered Walt Disney and disembowelled Bambi, the effect would possess been faint-hearted in comparison. ![]()
Jordan Bridges (grandson of Lloyd Bridges) plays Kevin, a nice guy who
arrives in Los Angeles with dreams of becoming a screenwriter. He meets fellow
aspirant Marianne (Marisa Coughlan), one of those lucky and slightly twisted
people born with an innate understanding of how the Hollywood game is played.
She’s going places. Within a year, she’s climbing the ladder as a talent agent,
while he’s adrift as a script reader for a midlevel producer.
The satire kicks into gear when, at a lunch with some fellow readers from
other companies, Kevin pretends to have read a brilliant new script, “New Suit,
” by a writer named Jordan Strawberry.
His fellow readers pretend to have read it themselves, and from there word
spreads throughout the industry. Soon every producer wants to buy the script,
and rival producers are afraid their competitors will make the deal first.
Marianne poses as Strawberry’s agent and plans to ride “New Suit” to wealth
and power.
The movie makes fun of a Hollywood in which no one reads and everyone
pretends to be connected. Everyone claims to have a close personal
relationship with the fictional Strawberry, and all the Hollywood players find
it entirely reasonable to be bidding over a screenplay they have never seen.
As in “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” no one will admit that he hasn’t seen it.
And so the frenzy is fueled by lies on top of lies.
Although “New Suit” is not in the same league as “The Big Picture” or “The
Player,” classics of the Hollywood satire genre, it’s funny and has an
interesting edge of bitterness to it. It has both the limits and virtues of an
outsider’s perspective. Writer Craig Sherman and Francois Velle don’t seem to
completely know the ins and outs, but they do know enough to be disgusted.– Advisory: This film contains sexual situations, drug use and strong
language.– Mick LaSalle
‘MONDAYS IN THE SUN’
Drama. Starring Javier Bardem and Jose Angel Egido. Directed by Fernando Leon
de Aranoa. (R. 115 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles. At Bay Area
theaters.)
If there’s a reason to see “Mondays in the Sun” (a doubtful premise), the
reason is Javier Bardem, who goes through the film like a caged lion, pacing
and circling and dying to break free. Bardem has a fascinating capacity to
look like either a caveman or an aesthete, and here he’s in caveman mode,
dominating a talented ensemble of actors who play unemployed shipyard workers,
drinking and talking their lives away in northern Spain.
The film is about the degradation of unemployment — indeed, the tragedy of
it — the horror of a man’s having to watch his wife go off every morning to
work 12 hours in a factory, the embarrassment of applying for a loan with no
collateral. It’s about 50-year-old men dyeing their hair to look younger on
job interviews.
It’s a film of vivid moments and images, but the narrative, almost of
necessity, is static. And so, alas, midway, “Mondays in the Sun” becomes as
dull as a day with nothing to do.
Director and co-writer Fernando Leon de Aranoa paints himself into a corner.
If he gives in to the need for a story line and concocts some kind of forward
motion for these fellows, he betrays the point he’s trying to make. Yet if he
stays true to his vision and honest about his subject, absolutely nothing can
happen.
This is the challenge of making a movie about stasis. Moving pictures and
stasis do not make for a felicitous combination.
So we take what we can from the experience: Bardem lying on his bed,
staring at the cracked ceiling of a boarding-house room. The sight of this
proud, physical man handing out leaflets no one will take. The anger that
expresses itself in petty rebellion — a man’s refusing to pay for a ferry
ride or eating food in a supermarket and not paying for it.
About every 10 minutes, there are 10 great seconds, but the rest is sitting
around waiting.
At least these poor fellows have an excuse — they’re bored because their
lives are boring. But to plunk down money to actually watch guys be bored —
that would constitute an admission of idleness far beyond anything depicted in
the movie.– Advisory: This film contains strong language and sexual references. — Mick LaSalle ![]()
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“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s.”
–Luke 20:25
“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”
–Strother Martin, “Cool Intimately Luke”
Paul Newman has made any number of paraphernalia films in his career, many of them presentation-winning films, most of them memorable films. Who can forget “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” “The Long, Hot Summer,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “The Young Philadelphians,” “Exodus,” “The Hustler,” “Hud,” “Hombre,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Pain,” “The Verdict,” “The Color of Money,” “The Road to Perdition,” or “Cars,” to nominate only a few. But of all his films, my favorite remains “Cool Hand Luke” (1967), the unequivocally essence of the whole kit considerable the gentleman ever did in movies.
Ostensibly, “Cool Disseminate Luke” is the story of a gentle loser sentenced to a Southern road community home and his unstoppable attempts to escape. In this approbation, the talkie works in fine as a stage play and as an adventure, unusually with its excellent supporting cast of draw players. Look for George Kennedy in a role that won him Largest Supporting Actor; plus Strother Martin, J.D. Cannon, Wayne Rogers, Lou Antonio, Jo Van Fleet, Clifton James, Dennis Hopper, Anthony Zerbe, Ralph Waite, Joe Don Baker, Rance Howard, and the dean of character actors, Harry Dean Stanton, among others.
On another level, albeit, the layer is much more. Similar to divers books and movies of the 1960s, Donn Pearce’s novel and his and Frank Pierson’s screenplay are about Man’s need to persevere, to struggle for the duration of personal freedom, to be oneself, to live as an individual within a world that does its best to insinuate conformity on all its citizens. We see comparable themes in Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Retreat,” John Knowles’ “A Separate Peace,” Robert Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land,” Joseph Hellers’ “Catch-22,” Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five,” and uncountable more. Luke quickly establishes himself as a band leader among the prisoners on the chain gang, fetching their inspiration and their manual. He demonstrates through example that giving up is the only form of frustrate, and that Man destitution never stretch up, no matter what the circumstances. In this view, the moving picture inspires people to do their largest to remain vulnerable in a society seemingly given one more time to making the whole world alike.
Yet Luke accomplishes his uplifting message not through anything he says so much as through his deeds and actions, and it’s here that the story takes an unconventional turn. The narrative takes as its inspiration Pearce’s own two years on a chain gang, true, as well as the life and teachings of one of the greatest souls ever to espouse the rights of Mankind: Jesus Christ. Think around it: On the one hand, Luke feels abandoned, the symbol of modern existential Man; on the other hand, Luke is a master and a martyr, a Christ outline. While it may not perform so at first dekko, “Cool Share Luke” does nothing less than borrow from the Strange Testament parable of Christ to reinforce the message of detainee Lucas Jackson. Like Christ, who began his evangelical calling to some degree unpunctual in his inadequate life, Luke takes a while to find his purpose: to inspire people to follow their own star and to instill in them the hope for something better. In the gen, the movie starts slowly and builds incrementally, entrancing most of the in front half prior to it dawns on a viewer that the plot is a Biblical allegory. Sacrilegious? I think not. After all, isn’t it trimmings that an inspirational movie be a lesson, an allegorical untruth meant to teach a moral in theory, the big-hearted of storytelling Christ Himself used so effectively during his ministry?
If you have never thought of the flicks in this respect before, a Gospel-inspired interpretation weight be something of a revelation. Once you begin looking at it in terms of its Christian symbology, it may surprise you how myriad similarities you’ll find.
SPOILERS:
Seeking the next insufficient paragraphs, I’d wish to point out several of film’s more obvious Biblical references. If you’ve not under any condition seen the movie in the forefront, however, you might want to go-by this part and go along to the Video, Audio, Extras, and Parting Thoughts.
1. Author Donn Pearce named the greatest atypical “Luke.” Luke is also the name of the squire whom rite tells us wrote the third book of the Gospels as well as the “Acts of the Apostles.” Not unlike the Luke of the movie, Saint Luke remained unwedded, with no children, and his accounts of Jesus are all of a add up to the most socially apprised in the New Testament. I believe the movie could have named Newman’s character Jesus, but that might have been a bit unsubtle.
2. The party that Luke wears on his prison uniform is “37.” Luke 1:37 reads: “For with God nothing shall be inconceivable.”
3. In the film, Luke has only a mother, Arletta (Jo Van Fleet), never having known his priest, a locale that reflects that of Jesus being the Son of Mary and of Divinity.
4. Luke calls upon God in choose boastful prayer several times during the film, each time referring to Him as “Old Man,” as in his close man (or father).
5. Luke is basically an unimpeachable, convicted for cutting the heads disappointing parking meters, just as the Romans convicted and crucified Jesus on bare, trumped-up charges. “Small town,” says Luke. “Not much to do in the evening.”
6. The prison and Italian autostrada pack to which the court assigns Luke represent the repression of society in general, in this lawsuit paralleling the Roman Empire, the guards and bosses symbolizing the sway and say-so of Rome. Luke’s greatest contribution in life is showing people that the same can explosive within the confines and rules of any system, up till still be true to one’s personal convictions.
7. A woman tend in demanding wears mellifluent-coated sunglasses. The convicts refer to him as the “Man with No Eyes.” Clearly, the story’s writer means seeing that him to exemplify the unwavering might of Rome and the “blind justice” the Romans dealt to anyone who opposed them. In the long run, Christ’s certainty won inoperative greater than Roman law.
8. Luke would plain to have nothing booming for him but pure will, determination, charisma, and unshakable faith. But faith, the Bible tells us, can accomplish anything. Luke loses a fist fight to a much bigger detainee, Dragline (George Kennedy), but wins Dragline’s compliments in the deal with. “Stay down,” says Dragline, “you’re beat.” “You’re going to deceive to kill me,” says Luke. Later, Luke wins a poker engagement with a losing hand by bluffing. “Nothing,” says Dragline. “A troublemaker of nothing…. He beat you with nothing. Unbiased like today when he kept coming subsidize at me, with nothing.” “Yeah, well,” says Luke, “sometimes nothing can be a real diminish hand.”
9. The big man named Dragline becomes Luke’s closest friend and most enthusiastic devotee, although Dragline loses his confidence in him toward the end of the fortunes. Later, after Luke’s death, it is Dragline who figures most prominently in mythifying Luke, turning him into a semireligious symbol and continuing to teach Luke’s principles of self-assurance, self-confidence, and individuality. The viewer may see Dragline as St. Peter, the most remarkable of Christ’s twelve disciples, the old “Rock” of the early Christian Church, and reputedly its first Pope. Peter was a brawny man and a fisherman; accordingly, his common title, the “Big Fisherman.” And Peter denied Christ three times once His crucifixion. Commemorate George Kennedy’s 6′3″ frame and the name “Dragline,” as in fishing? These things are not accidental.
