Contempt

The tension between a hollow present and an idealized past has haunted art history - and it kept Godard awake too. Yet unlike Dante, he could not follow his Virgil back centuries into Augustan antiquity. But in cinema's short history, there already existed something like a "promised land," and its Virgil was still alive during the filming of Contempt: Fritz Lang. Godard therefore cast the revered creator of Metropolis to play himself - a director filming a Homeric myth.

The idea of combining these "two antiquities" might have seemed audacious, had Godard not executed it with such convincing naturalness. Against this backdrop unfolds the story of a modern man unable to resist the power of money (Michel Piccoli as a European screenwriter versus Jack Palance as a Hollywood producer), and in despising himself, he loses his love as well (Brigitte Bardot).

Condemned by the plot's tragic outcome to the worst punishment - survival - he has no choice but to return to the place where the Fleeting becomes the Eternal.