Made in widescreen and colour with major stars (Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance), Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris (1963) was the closest the enfant terrible ever came to making a mainstream movie.
With typical irony, however, he used it to target the compromises involved in making a mainstream movie, a helmer and producer clashing over their disparate visions of how best to serve Homer's The Odyssey. The great director, played by real-life great director Fritz Lang, wants ART; the producer, portrayed by Hollywood hardman Palance, wants SEX.
Piccoli, meanwhile, is a beleaguered script doctor caught in the middle, his weak-willed fretting causing wife Bardot to feel the titular contempt. Sardonically scripted, it was shot in luminous Mediterranean locations by master DoP Raoul Coutard.
DVD Extras:
A missed opportunity. The trailer - - voiced by Bardot and Piccoli as a comic double act - - is fun, but otherwise there's just a pair of short, overlapping Making Ofs.
