preview

Jean Luc Godard 's ' Le Mepris '

Better Essays

Le Mépris is a film distinct in Jean-Luc Godard’s career, for many reasons: amongst others, it was his first foray into a more big-budget, large scale production. Ironically – or perhaps purposefully - one of the overarching themes explored within Le Mépris’ is maintaining artistic integrity, whilst attaining commercial success. Nowhere is this better explored than the famous middle sequence: their extended argument indoors. I aim to analyse this scene’s depiction as not only a simple argument between tumultuous lovers, but as it’s symbolic exploration of their decaying relationship as a whole, encompassing many of the overarching themes of ‘Le Mépris’ – love, ennui, and of course, contempt.

As soon as they step into their home, the door …show more content…

Perhaps this is really a subversive way to express the emptiness consuming their relationship.

Significant too at the beginning of this scene, is the way the camera follows Lucille and Paul. The majority of the time they are framed in shots alone, only in passing does the frame capture them both. Though they are inhabiting the same space, the choice to capture them separately is very deliberate, highlighting the isolation mounting within their relationship as they start to grow apart; tying into the existential theme that eventually, we all die alone. The vehicle of a failing relationship to depict this existential dread is an apt choice; nowhere more is isolation emphasized than in contrast of it’s antithesis: once romantic love, the communion of two souls.

Paul seems engrossed with his letters, pacing around the apartment staring at them, never really lifting his eyes to properly meet his wife’s gaze. The letters are symbolic of his work – his priorities now lie there, and not his wife. For a second, Lucille seems to snap from a sullen mood to a more playful one, and perhaps in a bid to grasp her husband’s attention once more, she asks him to guess what she bought today. When he asks what, and does not get an immediate answer, he reacts with irritation instead of

Get Access