The self-reflexivity of Contempt

While I think all of Godard's films are at least interesting, Contempt is probably my favorite for the way it builds tension and emotion between the characters through such a subversive cinematic way. The mise-en-scene works in a way with shot framing, French flag colors (though arguably also connected to America), and Brechtian form techniques. The film is about a French screenwriter, Paul, who is being courted by a vulgar American producer to rewrite the script for Fritz Lang. Self-conscious in many different ways, the film is about a movie being made, and has a rebellious tone in what would seem to be at face-value a pretty straightforward adaptation of the Italian novel on which it is based. Working off a big budget in a studio system setting, Godard still maintains complete control over every element of his film. While Brigitte Bardot was chosen with the producers' insistence to visibly showcase her sensual body, Godard manipulates studio intervention like this with the way he puts together the opening scene. It becomes a mockery of the cinema as "business" by taming the nuditiy, having Bardot spread across a bed naked while discussing something mundane. The dramatic music also repeats the same part over and over again, coming in at inappropriate times where it doesn't make sense to emphasize anything on-screen, and cuts off abruptly for no reason. The camera will also linger on certain dead spaces where characters leave the framing entirely, and certain framing of characters in shots tests the limits of the wide display of Cinemascope. But Contempt isn't just subversive of all these things formally but also in terms of content, as it challenges "epics". A review by Nathan Gelgud from the re-release of the film in 2008 sums this point up well: "Contempt is a movie about boredom, disgust and impatience told in the heightened language of vivid imagery."

I wonder if a lot of the sarcastic, self-reflexive, ironic things that Godard was doing in Contempt were just going over the heads of the producers or whether they gave in to his creative manipulation.