It is easy for people to look down on others, no matter whether they hide it or speak out, it is nothing more than covering up a lot of steps in their hearts, allowing themselves to stand on the top and look down at each other. To be honest, this look is quite enjoyable. In fact, most of the time, most people just look down. Godard asked a question - why do you look down? His old man is a happy person, and he gives the answer directly. There are many kinds of contempt, and the reasons for contempt vary widely. In Contempt, Godard provides the source of contempt that arises in a particular situation, that is, power.
In the story of "Contempt", Godard designed abstract character identities: cutting-edge screenwriter, screenwriter's wife, producer, director, translator. The characters constitute two groups of relationships, the screenwriter and the wife constitute the husband and wife relationship; the producer and the director, the translator, and the screenwriter respectively constitute the employment relationship. Each group of characters in the film has an unequal status and hidden power gap.
Two groups of abstract character relationships: one is professional, the people involved are running around and clamoring for their livelihood and their so-called ideals, revolving around an epic film "Odyssey" with a large investment scale. Filmmaker (and investor) Jerry - master director Fritz Lang - up-and-coming screenwriter Paul; the other group is in the family, with the so-called intimacy as a bond, in large or small residences, Two people in the name of "husband and wife", from fusion to split opposition, husband Paul - wife Camille.
The relationship between the two groups of characters is intertwined and coerced, and power has also experienced establishment-worship-deconstruction. During this period, contempt arose because of the different attitudes that different characters showed towards power. The core creator of the movie "Odyssey", with the producer as the core, constitutes a delicate power relationship. In this ecology, the power gap is huge, and the characters are under pressure in the face of this gap. What they say and do, as well as cover up and justify their words and deeds, lead to a desperate "contempt" in another set of power relations. .
There is a language gap in the film, which creates a communication barrier. Ironically, this communication barrier actually exists between the characters who are extremely dependent on communication. They are the core characters of the film creation. Da Yi, how did you shoot this? Not by language, by power. The producer can veto it by one vote, the director can "have something to do with the king's fate" when the crew is filming, and the screenwriter maintains a weak possibility of refusing to take orders. When the power collapses, the film ceases to exist. The funny thing is that the disintegration of power is because of another group of characters affected by power, and the mentality between wives and husbands changes, which in turn deconstructs power in reverse.
At what level can the pressure and flattery generated by the power gap penetrate?
I remember when I was the monitor in junior high school, I was convinced by the most naughty classmate in the class. He was the leader of the naughty children. In the second semester of the second year of junior high school, his influence swelled to the high school department. Finally, during a class break, he pulled two other "close friends" to beat up the big man in the second year of high school. The other party is said to have practiced taekwondo, but was knocked down by three second-year students. In the afternoon of the same day, the Political and Educational Office invited those involved away, and the head teacher held a special class meeting, occupying an entire Chinese class, and asked everyone to seriously discuss this phenomenon and dig to the bottom. Naturally, I bear the brunt of it. For a long time, I instinctively adopted the management strategy of "doing nothing" because of my stupidity (now it seems to be medical developmental delay). Given the opportunity this time, no matter how stupid I am, I have the instinct to perform well. As the squad leader, I first stated that it was wrong to hit someone, and then I became more and more excited. I said that if there is a conflict, I should understand it, and maybe I can become a friend... At this time, the head teacher interrupted his speech and said, " No need for friends." Later, the speeches of other people in the class were not remembered because of my slowness. However, I remember secretly remorse while I was relieved, how could I say that about my "close friend"? Now that I have been confused, I probably understand that if we study the things behind remorse, this remorse can turn into contempt.
It felt like in the first half of the second year of junior high school, the head teacher held a small meeting for the class cadres and asked everyone to select the first batch of people to join the group. There were only three places. At that time, my grades were above average and my discipline was low. The class teacher had already hinted that the first batch would definitely not have me. At this time, a candidate who was nominated actually spoke for me. In fact, he was not as qualified as me, but he had already been nominated as the first batch of candidates. He said good things for me at this time, probably just to be polite. The funny thing is that his "good words" didn't make sense and was interrupted by the head teacher. I quickly grabbed the conversation and stopped the "good words" from that person, and then began to criticize myself, recounting my sins, and finally won the head teacher's frequent nods, which was considered interesting to give up the first batch of candidacy. Now that I think about it, I stopped my classmates from speaking for me out of self-esteem; criticizing myself in front of the class teacher was out of self-preservation and instinctive surrender to absolute power. Given my sluggishness, self-criticism is, of course, a series of clichés that are not sincere. At that time, I lived in a daze, just fortunate to be able to hide from my parents.
Thinking about it further, I remember that I was promoted to junior high school and was designated as the monitor by the teacher. In less than a week, I was invited to the birthday party of the stubborn leader. After school, the invited classmates stayed in the classroom tacitly, chatting before the dinner, and the topic suddenly slipped to "boy boss" and "girl boss", the stubborn leader and another girl leader reached a certain It's a kind of "agreement", to the effect of "I'll help you get XXX for boys, and you help me get XXX for girls". It's hilarious to think about them talking about the power structure in front of the monitor. And I was numb enough to listen to them distributing power with wide-eyed interest. I analyze it now, partly because my mind is much younger than I look, but also because their thirst for power was so aggressive that I was caught off guard. Confused. There is no doubt that their power structure went bankrupt in the second year of junior high school. At that time, our class changed the head teacher. He was a male teacher with a temperament that was much more just than his heart, and the stubborn leader would also go abroad to study.
Thanks to my mechanical memory, I can still recall these terrible things more than twenty years later. I recognize it now, and the regret of that time has long since turned into contempt. I despised the precociousness and desire for power of the stubborn leader. I despised the selective justice of the head teacher, and I despised myself, who was aware of it but instinctively flattered to power.
In the early 1990s, Liu Zhenyun's novella "Chicken Feather in One Place" intertwined family and workplace relationships to form mutual interference in interests and power. Trivial matters seep out, and the people who are entangled in it have contempt for each other in their hearts, bite the bullet and live on, concealing their disgust from each other, and looking forward to a more decent life with no interest. Assuming the story continues, what kind of behavior and mind have they been living to this day? Incredible.
The reason why "Contempt" is so happy is that, in addition to Godard's always sharp approach, there is another point that the characters he designed refuse to "live". They are able to reflect - do they really need to live a little better? Come up with the answer, just pack up and leave. Godard still gave Paul a good ending, and he left the crew with shame. However, Godard was not so kind to Camille and Jerry. There is no emotion here. In the characters in Godard's films, only emotion has a sense of reality, and both emotions exist to complete his criticism. Just like "Exhausted" and "Pierro the Madman", love has never been a topic Godard cares about.
between husband and wife
In the film, the relationship between husband and wife collapsed, and the wife pointed at her husband's nose and said I despised you. Why contempt? On the surface, of course, it was because of the husband's weak flattery to the producer and the hypocritical cover-up of flattery, but thinking about it further, I'm afraid there is a more primitive emotion before the contempt.
The sweet wife Camille was angry with the up-and-coming screenwriter (husband) Paul at first. The anger, first of all, to herself, and then to her husband.
In the film, Camille meets Jerry for the first time, and her eyes only stay on his luxury car. She is much more eager and close to the luxury car than her husband's body. However, Camille is a social person after all, and her shame is always there. She wants her husband to be her fig leaf. When she can't resist Jerry's public provocation, she hopes that her husband can help her refuse. However, instead of giving her this step, her husband pushed the boat with the flow, which led to her anger. On the one hand, she herself cannot resist the glamorous temptation of money (power); on the other hand, her husband does not protect her; third, she is angry that her husband is subject to Jerry like a puppet.
As for her husband's teasing of the female translator, Camille never admitted that she was angry about it. Loyalty is no problem with her. Instead, it was the husband who brooded, and when Paul later explained to the director his vision for Ulysses, he made it clear that he was obsessed with his wife's loyalty.
The seeds of anger sprouted, and when the two returned home, Camille confronted her husband's hypocrisy. The husband kept saying that he could not take the order for Camille—it was nothing more than selling the new house. This kind of hypocrisy and cowardice of retreating has changed Camille's mood, and her attitude towards her husband has gradually become clear, which is contempt caused by anger. This contempt stems from the power gap between her husband and the Hollywood tycoons, as well as from her husband's hypocrisy - he himself does not admit that he is also conquered by the power of Hollywood tycoons, does not admit that he also cares about material life, but always advertises himself He is a playwright, and inside and out, he picks up Hollywood scripts to support his wife and to make a living.
And Camille's contempt is also determined by another layer of power relations. Camille and Paul's marriage has always been in an unequal state. First of all, the husband bears the source of the family's income, as well as the mortgage and the wife's high consumption. Secondly, Camille is a female typist and Paul is a well-known screenwriter. There is a huge gap between the two in terms of knowledge or cultural status. When this asymmetry is crushed by a higher status, the original admiration and attachment will mutate into anger, doubt, disappointment and contempt.
There is an unbearably 30 minutes in the film that is deliberately obscured. Hollywood tycoon Jerry has plans for Camille, making no secret of it, and invites Camille to take a ride to the manor. Paul tacitly allowed Jerry to take his wife away, and he was thirty minutes late. When the couple met again, Camille's attitude towards her husband turned sharply, full of indifference and resentment. No one knew what happened in the manor, thirty minutes.
However, Godard did not give an answer, the really interesting strokes, after leaving the manor, the couple returned to their new apartment they were renovating, and they had a lengthy confrontation like mutual torture.
Between the husband and wife, there was an endless loop of meaningless question and answer about whether Paul wanted to accept the screenwriting job proposed by Jerry. The so-called question and answer is actually to avoid responsibility, to ask knowingly. They are subject to the pressures of life (mortgage and expenses) and find excuses for each other to convince themselves and each other to take on this disgraceful script job. The shameful thing is that taking the job is tantamount to betraying the wife. In addition, this "Odyssey", which Jerry shot and controlled, has been completed, but Jerry is not satisfied with the expression of director Fritz Lang. If Paul accepts the screenwriting job, it is inevitable that he will subvert the concept of "old artist" he respects.
"I can refuse for you, anyway, I'll just sell the house..." Paul returned to the apartment and repeatedly used this sentence to test his wife. This is more of a threat than respect for the wife's opinion. Because the first thing my wife said when she came home was "I like this big house". At this time, the wife has no way to answer the call: if she expresses her position to let her husband take over the work, it is tacitly acknowledging that she will approach the vulgar Jerry, which is equivalent to completely liberating her husband and then washing away her husband's Sin - the sin of acquiescing to the wife and the boss who covets her to be alone; if you say that the husband will not take the job, it means giving up everything now, she hurts, and the house is in her name. Although the person who repays the loan is the husband and the breadwinner is the husband, her status as "hostess" is not true. She knows that she lives in a castle in the sky, but the building in the sky is still a building, so what if the house is sold? are gone.
This logic itself also formed a moral pressure on Camille. Gradually, she realized that her attitude towards Paul was "contempt" - contempt for her husband's cowardice and hypocrisy. All of this pushed her into the arms of Hollywood predators. After all, all she really had was that perfect body.
At this stage, Godard would inevitably rely on a dramatic relationship between characters on which to place his expression. Maybe he wants to explore the power relations of filmmaking, maybe he uses it to explore the natural paradox of filmmaking. Regardless of whether it is the destruction of film expression by the wide screen, or the adaptation paradox between literature and film, Godard still needs to be born out of the most daily life situation. This reality base, or the matrix of the reality situation, is more realistic than the beginning of Pierrot the Madman.
Camille herself is well aware of her vanity, and her instinctive affinity and fascination with power cannot be concealed. At that time, luxury cars and mansions were the thrones that symbolized the power of men. At that time, there was no need to buy an antique chair that the emperor sat on to prove power like Max in "Once Upon a Time in America". Superficial, which further points out the superficiality of the heroine.
How to express superficiality visually?
Among the ruins, there are movie posters on the wall, with works by her husband and more works by Fritz Lang. In the foreground of the poster, Jerry drives a luxury car, teasing the French screenwriter arrogantly. sweet wife. In the screening room, Jerry savagely throws away a stack of film, and the old director can only swallow it, after all, he has his plans. In the original soundtrack of Georges Delerue, there are two pieces of music, titled Venus and Ulysse, only after listening to know that this kind of music mixed with the characteristics of the Renaissance, just matched Fritz Lang's film in "Contempt", The old Hollywood director who was in exile took the risk of not being able to guarantee the evening festival to deal with the Hollywood predators, probably because he wanted to practice the European "Renaissance" in his mind with movies.
Superficiality is also reflected in Camille's means of balancing her husband. When she refused to communicate with her husband, she read aloud with Fritz Lang's autobiography in her hand. I'm afraid she didn't understand what she read, but it was enough that she could use it against her husband. After all, in front of her husband, her education level is equivalent to streaking, and she can only look down on her husband from the point of view of an old artist. What's more interesting is that Camille even questioned her husband's creative attitude. She accused her husband of plagiarizing other people's ideas at will.
Speaking of streaking, Camille avoided the producer and her husband in order to eliminate the embarrassment when her husband arrived. Seemingly casually opened the picture book on the table. Here she is very subtle. The first reaction is of course embarrassment. Each page of the album is a different sexual intercourse posture. Although the painting style is classic, and they are all characters in Roman mythology, because of the behavior of the people in the painting, I have exhausted my imagination to show different patterns. , which further contrasted the vulgar nature of the album, and of course she would be embarrassed in front of the two men. But we also found that Camille also looked into it and kept turning the pages. Later, in order to avoid the approaching Hollywood predators, she hides herself behind the album, but instead falls into a more erotic and provocative situation. When Jerry walks over, he meaningfully turns his eyes from the album to Camille, who Dodge awkwardly.
This eye contact has a dual effect. First, it sets the tone for the relationship between the two. What happened to the 30 minutes that were previously covered up and the 30 minutes that the husband was late and absent, intentionally or not? It's already hinted at here. At the same time, this exchange did not result in physical contact, but was even more erotic because of the album in hand, which also indicated that Camille had nowhere to escape. In the era of money endorsement power, Hollywood predators are like a black hole , he has too many tentacles, and has a fatal gravitational force on Camille, who is already greedy and vain.
After the arrival of her husband, Godard once again jumped out of the usual editing rules, seemingly casually interrupting the awkward triangle and four-corner relationship, inserting short flashes and flashbacks, aggravating the ambiguity, and the audience was even more interested in the 30 minutes that were covered. curious. What the hell happened in those thirty minutes? Flashbacks are too short to infer at all. The behavior of the characters cannot be pieced together into a logical chain that can be proved, and the relationship between Camille and Jerry cannot be established, and the mutual torture between Camille and her husband becomes more routine.
The husband realized that Camille must be hiding something, and after repeated questioning, it was all invalid. In addition to the half-hour that was covered up, there was actually another episode, which made the suspicion between the husband and wife even more confusing. This is an incident that has nothing to do with Jerry. At a certain time, Camille told her husband that she was shopping with her mother, but the mother's call directly pierced this lie. This episode did not directly specify why Camille lied, but it conveyed the deceitful state of the couple to the audience.
Because the guesses between them are not clearly directed, their emotions and behaviors are more likely to occur in arbitrary situations. At this moment, they represent all the couples in the abstract home space.
At the end of the film, Camille's death is by no means a punishment for the so-called "disloyalty". Camille refused to "make do" with her husband and chose to travel with Jerry, which led to her death, in the symbol of power. She goes on to deconstruct power - because of her crush on her, Jerry had the car accident.
Originally, according to her husband's plan, Camille and Jerry might die under his gun, but he is a coward after all, and the gun has become a self-deprecating tool. Fritz Lang warned him: don't take revenge, hatred and killing will make you lose your love forever. We need to ask, does Paul really love Camille? When he completely left the crew and stopped changing the script for the Hollywood tycoons, Jerry or his wife, for him, was no different from death. It was because of his obsession with his wife, or his obsession with his wife and a certain way of life, that he took over the job of changing the script, but obsession is not love.
A wife has physical power over Paul, and not having sex with him is torture. In this regard, at the beginning of the film, Camille cites all the attractive parts of her body and asks her husband if he loves them. Although her husband is a rising screenwriter star, it is inevitable that he will bow down to his perfect body.
between filmmakers
On the one hand, Godard used the unfinished and empty apartment as the stage for the play, and practiced his theatrical concept through the relationship between a husband and wife kidnapped by money. In the face of the ubiquitous money, an extreme tension has formed between husband and wife. They test, restrain, attack, hurt, and even despise each other. This series of emotional behaviors are hypocritical in the name of husband and wife relationship. This empty home is just a symbol of "home", without traces of life, it is not a real home.
On the other hand, Godard uses "play within a play" to explore the freedom of image expression, deliberately dismembering the situation at the moment when the situation is created. For example, in the opening couple's flirting paragraph, he arbitrarily switched multiple solid color filters to break the naked erotic communication between men and women, and broke the illusion that the audience was gradually created. In addition, the music passages inserted in the film suddenly have music every time, and the illusion originally constructed by the sound collapses. Between the departure of the music and the picture, the audience can appreciate the sense of grief with no escape, which is a kind of breathless sadness and beauty.
The design of the play within the play is a direct inquiry into the creation of the film. In the film, the film explores the feasibility of Homer's epic, which is the origin of literature, being filmed in three forms: raw film, script, and studio.
In Homer’s epic, God created man, and Ulysses was neither a god nor a man—he was a hero, a man favored by God, a man who challenged God’s arrangements. He seems to be omnipotent, but he is powerless to everything, and even the loyalty of his wife is a fatal problem for him. In the film, the gods can only exist in the form of sculpture, and they are mostly presented in parts, which are eternal and lacking in vividness. And Ulysses' wife, a real person, appeared on the scene. While she was swimming naked, she was molested by the drooling eyes of Hollywood predators, which also coincided with his next attack on Camille.
Fritz Lang himself is a film director, and he made an attribution to "God": God was created by man.
This is the pride of filmmakers. The reality is that Lang can only maintain a minimal dignity in front of Jerry, and his poor dignity can only be maintained through a female translator. When Jerry was shouting at Lang at his seaside villa, the old director could only ask a female translator, "Are you asking me to go or ordering me to go?".
Can the Odyssey be finished? By the end of the film, Lang is still stuck in the labyrinthine seaside cage that Jerry had built for him, doing mise-en-scene. "The Odyssey" is not finished, and one of the prototypes of literature, Greek mythology, cannot be filmed here in Godard. After all, Fritz Lang is still holding on, his back is holding on, and next to him is the assistant director who plays Godard himself running. This is the utmost respect, but it is still limited to a biting and mocking context.
The male screenwriter seems to claim to be writing a stage play, but in fact he has no contribution to the screenplay of "The Odyssey". The only so-called "contribution" is to provide a perspective of deconstructing the myth. The experience was imposed on the omnipotent and powerless Ulysses. He said that Ulysses had been wandering out for many years, not because he couldn't go home, but because his wife didn't love him, and because of his infidelity and contempt for him, he didn't want to go back. This kind of "substitution", which seems to be the most common creative routine today, is arrogant and pathetic when he interprets mythological characters in this way.
At this point, I realized that the paradox of "Contempt" is that the real part of the film, the husband-wife-producer triangle, has no impact on the Odyssey that is being filmed in the film. ” to have a real impact. Frieze Lang's "movie", which is almost parallel to the real world, is just an opportunity for Jerry to get in touch with Paul and Camille.
But, as in the absence of Jerry and Paul, the filmmaker's inability to make a movie is also infinitely emphasized by Godard. In the end, the producer dies, the investment is cut off immediately, and the writer is gone, and only Fritz Lang is still on camera, making a film that simply can't be done. The director has no decisive role in the creation of the film, the couple has no control over their emotions, and in the face of power (or some kind of force that can attract and destroy everything), everyone acts out of order.
For Godard, actions are accidental, the result of emotional variation under power relations, and symbols of his battle decree.
Attached:
Finally, it is my obligation to expand on "Camille". She is a set that was frequently selected from my son's picture book library. She is a cute giraffe from France. She will think of preparing a gift for Santa on Christmas Eve. Her name is Camille Son. So when I first heard Brigitte Bardot's name in the movie, I was very out of the loop.
Author: Zhan Shibang
Edit: Ski
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