Contempt

Contempt (Le Mépris, 1963) is Jean-Luc Godard's drama, available to watch online on iFILM. On sun-bleached Capri a crew shoots an adaptation of The Odyssey, while French screenwriter Paul watches his own wife, Camille, quietly turn cold toward him.

The trigger is almost nothing: Paul seems to nudge Camille toward American producer Jeremy Prokosch. From that moment the marriage cracks, and a long, draining quarrel in their apartment fills most of the film's middle — two people drifting through rooms, unable to finish a sentence. Brigitte Bardot plays Camille opaque and unreadable; Michel Piccoli is the man who grasps his loss far too late. Directing the Odyssey shoot is the legendary Fritz Lang, playing a version of himself.

Adapted from Alberto Moravia's novel, Godard made it a film about filmmaking and a film about love collapsing, all at once, lit in Raoul Coutard's scorching color and scored by a Georges Delerue theme that lingers for days. Not the gentlest doorway into the French New Wave, but one of its most beautiful. Stream Contempt (1963) online on iFILM.