CONTEMPT

Sunday, February 8th at 1:00 pm
and Tuesday, February 10th at 7:00 pm
Admission: FREE

NEW 35 MM SCOPE PRINT!

*PLEASE NOTE: Starting in JANUARY, all Essential Cinema films will be screened on SUNDAY and TUESDAY (not Sunday and Monday)*

All ESSENTIAL CINEMA films screen Sunday at 1:00 p.m. and Tuesday at 7:00 p.m., and admission is FREE!
See classic art films the way they were meant to be seen - on the big screen in glorious new 35 mm prints!

"They don't make them like this anymore. Point of fact, they never did; Godard's CONTEMPT is a once-a-century cultural constellation." - Nick Pinkerton, THE VILLAGE VOICE

“Brilliant, romantic and genuinely tragic. It's also one of the greatest films ever made about the actual process of moviemaking." – Martin Scorsese

Godard meets Bardot, and the film world would never be the same.
French New Wave wild man Jean-Luc Godard's cynical look at the art of filmmaking follows a frustrated screenwriter in his attempts to recount Homer's THE ODYSSEY. Packed with darkly comical insights into the compromises required of filmmakers, as well as a grab bag full of autobiographical allusions, especially concerning the failed union of Godard and actress Anna Karina, 1964's CONTEMPT is one of the most widely praised and deeply felt films about the filmmaking process. It is also considered the film that made Godard realize lavish productions were not for him, sending him back into a lower-budget arena where he could maintain complete control over his work.
Despite all the obstacles involved with making such a huge film, Godard, given international stars, a best selling novel by Alberto Moravia, two high-maintenance producers (Joseph E. Levine and Carlo Ponti), and the biggest budget of his career, still succeeded, as usual, in overturning the conventions of mainstream filmmaking, while producing a unique meditation on post-Hollywood filmmaking; the pitfalls of international productions; CinemaScope (“only for snakes and funerals,” chortles German filmmaker Fritz Lang); imposing modern psychological interpretations on classical themes; and Bardot’s world-famous derrière.
Shot in glorious CinemaScope by Raoul Coutard, CONTEMPT is not only a meta-movie about moviemaking, it's also a dramatic exposé of a dying marriage. Screenwriter Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli) is struggling with Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance), the manipulative American producer financing his big-budget venture, and is frustrated by Fritz Lang (playing himself), the film's egotistical director. Simultaneously, his marriage to his gorgeous wife Camille (superstar Brigitte Bardot, never more alluring than when lounging on a blood red couch in her snazzy apartment) founders, and the emotional distance between them weighs heavily upon him, threatening to derail both his personal and professional life.

Essential Cinema is sponsored by The Arizona Opera, The Arizona Commission on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.