Coping with Contempt: (Jean-Luc) Godard's Rejected Male and His Hollywood Prototypes
1999; Issue: 48 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2562-2528
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema and Media Studies
ResumoThat there were Hollywood influences upon the French New Wave has never been in doubt. Critical analysis and debate has tended to focus upon the early films such as Godard's Breathless (1959) and Truffaut's Shoot the Pianist (1960) and their elements of homage and pastiche, while films of the mid to late 60s have generally been accepted as more ambivalent or antagonistic to Hollywood/ America -- often for reasons connected with the political sensibilities of the era or the filmmaker's perceived or assumed standpoint at the time. My own research project has focused upon attempting to trace what I suspect to be a continuing and quite profound influence throughout this period, and to link the enduring appeal of specific Hollywood generic, thematic and iconographic forms to the ways in which they tapped into the psychological and social conflicts arising from the post-war crisis of masculinity in our increasingly materialistic Western society. Godard's Contempt (Le Mepris) of 1963 is a particularly good example of the extent to which Hollywood models of masculinity -- of how to be a man -- remained attractive to French intellectuals of the period. And I want to argue that one reason for the appeal of certain generic forms and thematic structures in this instance was that the problems they portrayed and attempted to resolve in the stories of characters such as Bama Dillert (Some Came Running) and Dude (Rio Bravo) -- both played by Dean Martin -- had real personal resonances for Godard himself. It is worth recalling in this context that following the British re-release of Godard's Contempt in Sight and Sound, Colin MacCabe celebrated it as `one of the few examples of a genuinely European film', and one which `bears witness to the swift disillusionment that the young Cahiers du cinema critics-turned-directors felt for Hollywood cinema'. (1) Thus, compared to other films Godard made during the sixties, Contempt has -- despite the presence of Jack Palance and Fritz Lang in its cast -- traditionally been seen as a work in which European influences predominate over those of Hollywood cinema. The fact that the story was based on a novella by Moravia and that there are references to, and parallels with, Rossellini's Viaggio in Italia can be said to account for a certain critical foregrounding of European sources, as in the study by Jacques Aumont. (2) I want to inject a note of caution into such a reading, for two reasons. Firstly, some of the parallels which could be assumed to be Godardian hommage are part of the fabric of the novella, which was written when Moravia was working within the Italian film industry. Indeed, the scenario writer of Viaggio in Italia has remarked how he recognised aspects of his own personal history in the story. (3) Secondly, this reading discounts the plans Godard initially made for shooting this big budget movie in Hollywood with stars such as Sinatra and Kim Novak. If ultimately he settled for production at Cinecitta, as in the novel, with its readymade echoes of Rossellini's work, it would be less than surprising to find parallels and references within scenario and mise-en-scene to Viaggio and its director. However, some of Godard's own comments should caution against over-emphasising this influence, since he himself has talked in terms of the European thematic or cinematic elements being altered or improved by being treated more in the Hollywood fashion. In making this film, Godard has stated that he wanted to make `a successful Antonioni, in other words filmed by Hawks.' (4) And if the mention of Hawks were not enough of a clue, a further quotation makes abundantly clear that it was in the conception of a certain noble or epic quality in the masculinity of the Hollywood hero that the director found his major inspiration, as he discusses `the transformation of the hero who, in passing from book to screen, moves from false adventure to real, from Antonioni inertia to Laramiesque dignity. …
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