Laura Mulvey

Le Mépris and its story of cinema: a fabric of quotations*

In Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963) and quotation the world of cinéphilia the cinema has a central presence on seeps into Le Mépris mediating bet- various different levels. The making ween past and present. As quotation of a film has brought the central cha- necessarily refers backwards in time, racters together and the dramatic pro- Godard evokes a now ended era with cesses of film-making are often shown an aesthetic device that always comes on screen, as a backdrop to the hu- out of the past. Thus, in Le Mépris, man drama. But woven into this overt form (quotation) is appropriate to its presence is another story about the content (history). cinema: its histories and its contem- But, on the other hand, quotation is a porary crises. Only occasionally expli- key modernist formal device, fragmen- citly reaching the surface of the film, ting a text’s cohesion, disrupting tradi- this story is concealed in signs, images tional forms of reading by introducing and allusions. The unifying thread that other layers to a linear structure. As ties these oblique references together Peter Wollen puts it in his discussion is the world of cinéphilia, Godard’s of quotation in Godard’s Le Vent d’Est formative years as a critic for the Ca- (1970): hiers du Cinéma and the films and di- One of the main characteristics of moder- rectors he had written about and loved nism […] was the play of allusion within during the 1950s. That world had, by and between texts… The effects to break 1963, moved into a past tense: the Ho- up the heterogeneity of the work, to open llywood studio system that had produ- up spaces between different texts and ty- ced the politique des auteurs had aged pes of discourses… The space between the and had been overtaken by industrial texts is not only semantic but historical changes; Godard was no longer a ci- too, the different textual strata being re- néphile critic but a successful New sidues of different epochs and different Wave director. But through allusions cultures (Wollen, 1982: 102).

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These kinds of insertions also ne- that had overtaken and were overtak- from the days of the Cahiers to those cessarily address the reader/spectator ing the cinema. The anomalies do, of the Nouvelle Vague, from loving a and generate two possible directions of course, take on multiple shapes or particular shot to using it in his own of engagement: one remains with the forms, deviating from a strict concept films. About thirty years later, this text’s overt meaning while the other of quotation. Iampolski sums up this lifelong partiality for quotation cul- takes a detour into a latent and more multiplicity when he points out that an minated in Historie(s) du cinéma. Le uncertain terrain. To reflect Mépris,released in 1963 as on the passing references, a comparatively large bud- especially if they are not un- get fiction film with corres- derlined or emphasised by I would like to reflect on those ponding production va- the film’s action, involves moments when reference to the lues, adapted from a quite a step aside from the main conventional novel, bene- line of the film’s narrative. cinema within Le Mépris intrude fits from the retrospective The temptation is to pause, and direct the spectator away from shadow cast by Histoire(s). to attribute a reference to Not only are both made its source, or attempt to the internal logic of the text, its up of a tissue of film quo- trace it until the trail is lost, tation and reference, but as opposed to following manifest narrative, and towards both were also made du- the forward flow of a text. “other explanations” ring transitional periods So, for instance, when I in film history. Looking analyse, later in this essay, back at Le Mépris from this further associations triggered for me by anomaly takes the form of a fragment perspective, its juxtaposition between the posters in Cinecittà, I will be giving which means: “what is traditionally cinema history and quotation gains priority to certain background ima- considered a quote may end up not be- in significance, the fiction dominates ges over the crucial narrative moment ing one, while what is not traditionally less, the characters give way to their when Camille and Jerry meet, when seen as a quote might end up being emblematic casting and the network- Paul betrays Camille and the theme of one” (Iampolski, 1998: 31). like structure, central to the Historie(s) contempt begins. Mikhail Iampolski Godard’s taste for quotation has often aesthetic, becomes more visible. Fur- describes the relationship between been commented on and he himself thermore, Historie(s) draws attention quotation and the spectator’s detour in uses the phrase in a long interview in to the place Le Mépris itself occupies the following terms: the special Nouvelle Vague issue of Ca- in film history, how close it lies, in The anomalies that emerge in a text, bloc- hiers du Cinéma (168, December 1962) 1963, to 1950s Hollywood, both as king its development, impel us towards he says, in relation to À bout de souffle: a time of industrial decline but also an intertextual reading. This is because Our earliest films were simply films made the decade which the last great films every normative narrative text possesses by cinéphiles. We could make use of wha- studio system films were still being an internal logic. This logic motivates tever we had already seen in the cinema made. It was these films that Godard the presence of the various fragments to deliberately create references. This was loved in particular and that provi- of which the text is made. If a fragment particularly the case for me. […] I construc- ded his formation as a director (as he cannot find a weighty enough motivation ted certain shots along the lines of ones points out in the 1962 interview). But for its existence from the logic of the text, that I already knew, Preminger’s, Cukor’s, the presence of history draws atten- it becomes an anomaly, forcing the rea- etc. Furthermore, Jean Seberg’s character tion to an aesthetic shift. Quotation in der to seek its motivation in some other follows on from Bonjour Tristesse. I could Le Mépris is no longer simply a taste. logic or explanation outside the text. The have taken the last shot of that film and It enables anelegiac commentary on search is then constructed in the realm of added an inter-title “Three Years Later” the decline of one kind of cinema intertexuality (Iampolski, 1998: 30). […] It comes from my taste for quotation while celebrating another, the style I would like to reflect on those mo- that has always stayed with me. In life, that Godard had himself developed ments when reference to the cinema people quote things that appeal to them… within the context of the French New within Le Mépris intrude and direct the So I show people quoting: except I arrange Wave. Summing up this situation, Mi- spectator away from the internal logic their quotations in a way that will also ap- chel Marie says: of the text, its manifest narrative, and peal to me (Godard, 1968: 28). The aesthetic project of Le Mépris is enti- towards “other explanations”. To my Quotation, Godard seems to be sa- rely determined by the context of the end mind, when followed up, the anomalies ying, offered a point of cinematic of classical cinema and the emergence begin to form a network, relating back transition in his trajectory from ci- of new revolutionary forms of narrative to a latent, other story of the changes néphile/critic to cinéphile/director, (Marie, 1990: 14).

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It was Alberto Moravia’s novel Il Diz- duced and distributed movies but also form a triptych in which the old that prezzo (1954) from which Le Mépris is ran their own theatre chains (Schatz, Godard loved, especially Hollywood, adapted that gave Godard, in the first 1998: 4). is enunciated through the new he be- instance, the necessary film-within-a In the first instance, these changes lieved in. In his book on Fritz Lang, film framework from which to deve- were set in motion by the Paramount Tom Gunning uses the screening room lop his own themes and reflections. Decree of 1948. The Federal Govern- sequence in Le Mépris to discuss the The novel was based on Moravia’s own ment wanted to break the restrictive complex question of film authorship. real-life encounter with the Italian film practices inherent in Hollywood’s ver- He says: “The film-maker functions industry when, as a journalist, he vi- tically integrated system of production, less as a scriptor than as a fashioner of sited the location of Mario Camerini’s distribution and exhibition. After the palimpsests, texts written over other 1954 spectacular Ulisse (a Lux Film Decree, the studios had to sell their ci- texts creating new meanings from the production with Kirk Douglas as Ulys- nemas. The old financial mode of self- superimposition of old ones” (Gunning, ses, also starring Silvana Mangano and investment, through which production 2000: 6). For all three of the triptych se- Anthony Quinn). Il Dizprezzo uses a was supported by box-office returns, quences, the concept of palimpsest has film production of The Odyssey as the was gradually replaced by individual special relevance, evoking the way that setting for a tight group of characters package deals put together by indepen- quotation and reference create layers (producer, director, screen-writer and dent producers, stars and increasingly of time, bringing something from past screen-writer’s wife). The setting brings powerful agents and agencies, with the into the present, which then inscribes together the story of a film in produc- increasing participation of banks and the present onto the past. In a similar tion, a marriage in decay and intellec- other outside investors. Furthermore, but different manner, ghostly rather tual debate about Homer’s epic poem. during the 1950s box office receipts than textual, the actors too have mea- The novel shows no interest in either declined due to the rise of television ning layered into their present fictional the mechanics of film-making or the (from $80 million c. 1950 to below $20 roles. As Jacques Aumont puts it: history of cinema. Godard, however, million c. 1960) and the industry stru- Jack Palance, Georgia Moll and Fritz makes the most of the way that, unlike ggled for survival. It was in this context Lang are vehicles, in the flesh, of part a novel, a film about a film in produc- that Hollywood began to invest in spec- of the past, of history. They are living tion is necessarily self-referential and tacular historical blockbusters. In Le quotations and, already survivors of a thus modernist. But above all, Godard Mépris, the conflict between Fritz Lang, vanished world…: through them, Godard inserts into the adaptation of the hu- representing old Hollywood, and Jerry quite consciously evokes not only his man story, his story of the cinema. Prokosh, who represents the new breed own immediate past as cinéphile –The To reiterate, the latent story in Le of producer associated with package Barefoot Contessa, The Quiet American – Mépris makes visible a break in film deals gestures to this history. And the but a more distant, already heroised and history: on the one hand, there is the film of The Odyssey does, of course, re- mythic past… (Aumont, 2000: 176). new flourishing cinema of the New present the new focus on the big movie In the first sequence of the triptych, Wave and Godard’s own modernist, that would, with luck, pull off a major the studio lot stands idle and deserted. innovative style and, on the other, Ho- box office hit; this was very different Francesca (the producer’s assistant) llywood cinema of the 1950s, and the from the returns made from a feature a explains to Paul (the screen writer): flourishing cinéphilia it had fostered in week that had sustained the Hollywood “Jerry has sent everyone home. Things Paris, both of which had disappeared genre system and its auteur directors. are hard in the Italian film industry by the beginning of the 60s. Thomas at the moment”. Jerry, the American Schatz sums up the radically changed The Cinecittà triptych: the studio producer, then appears on the edge conditions in the Hollywood industry lot, the screening room, the of the sound stage and proclaims, in that lay behind the disappearance of posters long shot and as though addressing a the films valued by the politique des The story of cinema in Le Mépris is vast audience, that he has sold the stu- auteurs critics: vividly laid out through a kind of pre- dios for real estate development. And Gone was the cartel of movie factories story at the beginning of the film and Francesca’s final remark: “C’est la fin that turned out a feature every week for a is clearly marked by use of quotation. du cinéma” carries the sense of crisis hundred million movie-goers. Gone were Leaving aside its subsequently inserted beyond Cinecittà to the general decline the studio bosses who answered to the prologue, Le Mépris opens with three of industrial cinema by the late 1950s New York office and oversaw hundreds, sequences set in Cinecittà, the film and even to the question of cinema even thousands of contract personnel studios outside Rome, which were as itself [Figure 1]. The studio lot is itself, working on the lot. Gone was the indus- evocative of the Italian film industry as to adapt Aumont’s terms, “a vehicle, a trial infrastructure, the integrated system Hollywood for the US, or Pinewood for part of the past, a history” and, as such whose major studio powers not only pro- the UK. Together, the three sequences might be understood as mise-en-scène

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literature, on the other, by the presence of figures with an em- blematic association with Ho- llywood. And Louis Lumière’s grim prediction, written in large letters under the screen, “Le cinéma est une invention sans avenir” creates a link to the elegiac spirit of the first and third sequences [Figure 3]. Central to the screening room sequence are the rushes, shots of the statues of the gods or snippets of the story composed more in tableaux than in con- tinuity [Figure 4]. As bits of ci- nema, they are short and finite, as indeed are rushes, but they take on the aesthetic characte- ristics of quotation: fragmenta- tion and repeatability. Several commentators have pointed out that the style with which the statues are filmed, accom- panied by Georges Delerue’s music, strikingly quotes the filming of the statues, accom- panied by Renzo Rossellini’s music, in Roberto Rossellini’s Viaggo in Italia (1954). While the literary quotations are, by and large, overt and at- Figure 1 (top). Francesca’s final remark: “C’est la fin du cinéma” carries the sense of crisis beyond Cinecittà to tributed, the conjuring up of the general decline of industrial cinema by the late 1950s and even to the question of cinema itself. / Courtesy of Hollywood is more complex, Paramount Home Media Distribution Spain Figure 2 (bottom). Set in the studio screening room, the confined space is criss-crossed by quotation and reference here taking place through the of all kinds: spoken, enacted, written, personified, discussed. / Courtesy of Paramount Home Media Distribution signifying properties of the ac- Spain tors as living quotation. Fritz Lang, as the fictional director, as quotation. Poignantly, the scene aesthetic of quotation. Set in the studio obviously brings his own cinematic his- isset in the lot belonging to Titanus screening room, the confined space is tory with him, but so do Jack Palance (the studio that had produced Roberto criss-crossed by quotation and refe- (as Jerry Prokosh) and Giorgia Moll (as Rossellini’s Viaggo in Italia in 1953) rence of all kinds: spoken, enacted, Francesca) who also represent, meton- and which was, in actual fact, just about written, personified, discussed [Figure ymically, particular Hollywood films to be demolished. The fate of Cinecittà 2]. Francesca and Paul join Prokosh, the that had significance for Godard. Mi- corresponds to that of the Hollywood producer, and Fritz Lang, the director to chel Piccoli (as Paul Javal) brings to this studios at the time, more valuable as watch rushes from their production of collective of signifiers a particular reso- real estate than for film production. The Odyssey, (part Italian peplum, part nance of Paris: as an actor, he evokes The second sequence of the Cinecittà Hollywood spectacular). The conver- the French New Wave; as a character, triptych, brings together the central sation between the characters enables he evokes Parisian cinéphilia. group of Le Mepris’s characters who Godard to juxtapose references to the As well as having appeared in Italian all, fictionally, belong to the cinema contemporary state of cinema and clas- peplum productions, Giorgia Moll had through their various roles in the pro- sical European culture; and these two played the French speaking Vietna- duction of The Odyssey. It is here that themes are reiterated, on the one hand, mese heroine in Joseph Mankiewicz’s Godard introduces most intensely the by literal quotations from European The Quiet American (1958), thus crea-

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ting a direct link to one of Godard’s favourite directors. He had reviewed the film on its release with his usual ad- miration but also disappointed that Mankiewicz’s intelligent, elegant script was imperfectly realised as film (Arts 679 July 1958). In Le Mépris, Giorgia Moll plays Francesca Vanini, a character invented by Godard (she is not in the Moravia no- vel) whose name refers directly to Roberto Rossellini’s latest film Vanina Vanini (1961), (which will represent him on the line of posters in the third sequence). As Prokosh’s inter- preter, she comes to stand for living quotation in a different sense, repeating the words of others, translating, often very freely, between the mono- linguistic Paul and Camille on the one hand, and Prokosh on the other. As well as her own native language, Italian, with Lang she can speak English, French or German and gains his approval for her recognition and translation into French of his quotation from the German poet Hoderlin’s “The Poet’s Vo- Figure 3 (top). Louis Lumière’s grim prediction, written in large letters under the screen, “Le cinéma est une inven- cation”. tion sans avenir” creates a link to the elegiac spirit of the first and third sequences. / Courtesy of Paramount Home Media Distribution Spain Jack Palance brings Ho- Figure 4 (bottom). Central to the screening room sequence are the rushes, shots of the statues of the gods or snip- llywood into Le Mépris in pets of the story composed more in tableaux than in continuity. / Courtesy of Paramount Home Media Distribution several ways. As a starin his Spain own right, he represents the Hollywood star system as such. But Steiger. Palance thus brings with him slow, almost Frankenstein-like move- he also represents a link, both as a star a double quotation: he is the star who ments recall Warren Stephen’s stony, and through his fictional character, had played the role of a star, while in almost motionless performance as Jeremiah Prokosh, to a cluster of Ho- Le Mépris, in the persona of Jeremiah Kirk Edwards. To these two Hollywood llywood films-about-film that had been Prokosh he references the character on Hollywood films should be added made in the 50s, all of which include personified by Steiger. Furthermore, as Vincent Minnelli’s 1952 The Bad and an unscrupulous and exploitative pro- Michel Marie points out, Prokosh is a the Beautiful in which Kirk Douglas ducer or studio boss. In the first ins- direct descendent of Kirk Edwards, the plays the prototypically unscrupulous, tance, Palance would, for Godard, have megalomaniac, casually brutal and se- if more engaging, producer Jonathan linked back to Robert Aldrich’s 1955 xually predatory Hollywood producer Shields. film The Big Knife, an adaptation of a in Joseph Mankewicz’s 1954 The Ba- Although Prokosh has been said Clifford Odets play about the conflict refoot Contessa, a film that had been to evoke Godard’s real life producers between a star (Palance) struggling to highly prized by Cahiers du Cinéma. Carlo Ponti and Joe Levine, the icono- maintain his ethical principles in the Palance’s chiselled, mask-like featu- graphical legacy of these Hollywood face of the power and persistent bu- res (due to plastic surgery after being movies is very strong. But, as well as llying of the studio boss, played by Rod wounded in World War 2) and his inscribing these traits and characteris-

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tics, Godard uses Prokosh specifically both with very different aesthetic impli- atic of this complex cinematic history. to signal the decline in Hollywood pro- cations. Still wearing, as a badge of belonging duction values in the face of cynicism, If Prokosh, in his Le Mépris role, is and distinction, the monocle that sig- philistinism and a taste for kitsch. A emblematic of changing Hollywood, nifies the old days of Weimar, Lang is throwaway remark of Fritz Lang’s in- Lang stands, in stark contrast, for a quotation as embodiment, summoning dicates that Prokosh is not, for him, long history of the cinema, some of its up the past and inserting it into a pres- within the true tradition of Hollywood most outstanding films and its more ent to which he no longer belonged. independent production. Refusing his generally changing fortunes. Born in In the third sequence of the triptych, invitation to have a drink, Lang quotes 1890, shortly, that is, before the cin- these themes are realised and con- a famous Goldwynism (Sam Goldwyn ema and making his first film in 1919, firmed. Outside the screening room, the tended to mix up language): “‘Include Lang and cinema matured, as it were, characters act out their scene in front me out’, as Sam Goldwyn a real pro- side by side. Due to the Mabuse films of a wall of posters; Howard Hawks’ ducer of Hollywood once said”. And (1922), Metropolis (1927), and his pro- 1962 Hatari!, Godard’s own 1962 Vivre Prokosh’s first appearance in Cine- lific output during Weimar period, as a sa Vie, Rossellini’s 1961 Vanina Vanini città underlines the new commercia- living quotation he brings to Le Mépris and Hitchcock’s 1960 Psycho [Figure lism. While Godard’s citation of the the memory of aesthetic achievements 5]. Apart from Godard, the three were Hollywood-on-Hollywood films puts Le of German silent cinema, then, with M great directors celebrated and defended Mépris within this sub-genre, evoking a in 1931, early experiment with synch during Godard’s time as a Cahiers du tradition of films of self-reference (that sound. (It might be worth remember- Cinéma critic, but all were, by this does, of course, pre-date the 1950s), he ing, in the context of the late 1950’s point in time, nearing the end of their is also clearly gesturing towards the blockbuster, that Lang had almost careers Appropriately, Godard inserts industry’s uncertain future, underlined bankrupted UFA in 1927 with his spec- the figure of Fritz Lang into this series bythe Lumière quotation. The decline, tacularly expensive spectacular Metrop- of homages. Framed alone, in front of he seems to imply, was already there in olis). In 1933, he joined the stream of the posters, Lang walks quite slowly the beginning. exiles from Nazism who then contrib- towards the camera as he lights a ciga- Fritz Lang is first introduced to the uted so much to Hollywood during the rette and, emphasising the mythic na- film by the most well-know anecdote years of the studio system. From Fury ture of this portrait shot, music briefly of his career. Paul tells Francesca that in 1936 to Beyond Reasonable Doubt in appears on the sound track. In the Goebbels offered Lang a privileged po- 1956, he made a film, sometimes two, next couple of shots, Paul, as a ciné- sition in UFA, to which he had replied every year (except one). Although he phile, brings cinema directly into his by leaving the following day for Paris was, by and large, successful (unlike conversation with Lang. Lang brushes and then the United States1. Godard fo- some of his compatriots), he too found aside Paul and Camille’s admiration for llows this up with an enacted confron- it increasing hard to direct by the mid Rancho Notorious (1952), “the western tation between Lang and Prokosh in 1950s. In Germany, in the late 1950s, with Marlene Dietrich”, with “I prefer the screening room. In a moment that he directed his own versions of spec- M”. But Paul persists and mentions the seems anomalous and strange, Prokosh taculars: The Tiger of Eshnapur and The scene in which Mel Ferrer (as Frenchie violently interrupts the screening, clai- Indian Tomb as well as an attempt to Fairmont) allows Marlene Dietrich (as ming that the images on the screen return to the Mabuse cycle. By the time Altar Keane) to win at chuck-a-luck. were not in the script. Lang brings the he appeared in Le Mépris, he had made This was a favourite moment of Go- argument to an end saying calmly: “Na- no films for three years; on the other dard’s, to which he refers specifically in turally, because in the script it’s written hand, as an early pantheon director his general discussion of the Western and on the screen it’s pictures, motion of the politique des auteurs, his criti- in his Man of the West review. The ci- pictures it’s called”. According to Tom cal status had risen in France and Luc tation of Rancho Notorious has its own Gunning, this is a re-enactment of a Moullet’s book Fritz Lang, that Camille relevance to the posters that frame the confrontation between Lang and Eddie reads and quotes from in the apartment conversation between Paul and Lang; Mannix, his first US producer. Both sequence, had been published in 1963. the film is itself about aging but mythic these anecdotes show Lang confron- Godard treats Lang reverentially, him- figures of the West (Frenchie Fairmont ting authority; but one is given its place self acting the role of the fictional di- and Altar Keane) who have become in Lang’s biography, while the other rector’s assistant. He frames and films part of its legend, just as these direc- floats, functioning dramatically as a Lang so that his literal presence takes tors have become part of the legend of fragment but without explanation. To- on the mythical quality due to an old Hollywood as told by the Cahiers du gether, these two anecdotes represent man, no longer employable but, more Cinéma. two very different kinds of quotation, than any other director still living at But this sequence is also the one in the attributed and the to-be-deciphered, the time, stretched across and emblem- which Brigitte Bardot, as Paul’s wife,

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Camille, first appears. As she stands esca Vanini” summoned by name over isolated situation, in which death and against the backdrop of posters, she per- an intercom a few seconds before the love intermingle with the group’s in- sonifies new cinema, a new kind star- film’s poster appears on the screen. ternal dynamics. The Hawksian group dom, as well as a new kind of glamour, In this concluding section, I would has a certain resonance for Le Mépris: European as opposed to Hollywood. In like to exemplify ways in which quo- here again a small group of people are the last resort, she stands for the per- tation can set in train further lines of thrown together by the chance contact sonification of cinema. If Godard tends thought that might be particular to of their profession creating a drama of to fuse cinematic beauty with that of the spectator. A quotation or reference professional and personal conflicts and his female star, this is particularly so might trigger associations for the spec- loyalties. in Le Mépris. But the presence of the tator that go beyond the specific textual I would like to end by reflecting on Vivre sa Vie poster creates it own dis- context and produce an extra-textual the particular importance of Viaggio tinctive chain of female beauty reach- reverie. Thus for me personally (and, in Italia for Le Mépris, due not only to ing back across the history of cinema. very likely, others), thinking about Le the filming of the statues of the gods, Later in the film, Camille wears a black Mépris in the light of Hatari! and Psy- but also more generally to the story wig, bobbed in the style worn by Anna cho unexpectedly draws attention to of a marriage in crisis. Here the latent Karina in Vivre sa Vie, which in turn coincidences of narrative and theme. references to cinema history link spe- cites Louise Brooks. Much admired by Like Psycho, Le Mépris is separated cifically to the modernism of quotation the director of the Cinémathèque Fran- into two distinct parts, the first takes as a formal device. Godard confirms çaise, Henri Langlois, for an insouciant place over the course of one day dur- the relevance of Rossellini’s film very seductiveness in films such as Hawks’ ing which the ordinariness of every- precisely: at the end of the audition 1928 A Girl in Every Port to Pabst’s 1929 day life is overtaken by catastrophe: scene, the group leave the cinema and Pandora’s Box, Louise Brooks might be Marion’s crime and death in one case, pause to talk outside, allowing a poster seen as a pre-figuration of Godard’s fas- the loss of Camille’s love in the other. for Viaggio in Italia to be clearly seen cination with a feminine beauty that Although the second part of Psycho is in the background. Viaggio introduces fused with the beauty of the cinema. not, as in Le Mépris, streamlined into another kind of palimpsest in its rela- The bracketing of Hawks and Hitch- a single day, both films are overshad- tion to Le Mepris. In the first instance, cock conjures up André Bazin’s ironic owed by fate: what might seem a minor the story of Paul and Camille’s mar- term Hitchcocko-Hawksianism to de- ethical failing (on the part of Paul and riage re-inscribes that of Emilia and scribe the dedicated supporters of the Marion) is punished beyond reason by Riccardo from the novel Il Dizprezzo, politique des auteurs at the Cahiers. “the gods” of narrativity. The relevance creating another temporal layer, just as Both directors had started their su- of Hatari!is more thematic and has less any adaptation must necessarily hover premely successful careers in the 1920s to do with narrative structure. The film behind its retelling [Figure 6]. In Viag- and had flourished under the studio repeats one of Hawks’ preferred story gio in Italia Alex and Katherine Joyce system but with comparative inde- settings:a small group of people are are an English couple staying in Naples pendence (Hitchcock, of course, arriv- arbitrarily thrown together in some whose marriage, quite suddenly, falls ing from Britain in the late 30s). But both were old by the time of Le Mépris and would only make films occasion- Figure 5. Outside the screening room, the characters act out their scene in front of a wall of posters; Howard ally until the 1970s. Although he was Hawks’ 1962 Hatari!, Godard’s own 1962 Vivre sa Vie, Rossellini’s 1961 Vanina Vanini and Hitchcock’s 1960 to make two more films (Anima Nera Psycho. / Courtesy of Paramount Home Media Distribution Spain in 1962 and Italia Anno Uno in 1974), Rossellini’s career in cinema was also just about over. From 1961 to the end of his life in 1977, apart from a few documentaries, he would work exclu- sively for television. Vanina Vanini was adapted from a novella by Stendhal. Set in Rome during the Risorgimento (Rossellini had celebrated its centenary the previous year with Viva l‘Italia), the story bears witness to Stendhal’s love of Italy and his fascination with its struggle for liberation. As if to empha- sise its significance, Godard has “Franc-

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apart. During one of their embittered fragile link to his Ulysses, his retelling to Godard’s earlier film Le Petit Soldat exchanges, Katherine turns to Alex of The Odyssey into the great epic of in which he quotes dialogue between with the words: “I despise you”. But modernist literature, itself a palimpsest Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden just as Godard uses the quarrelling of quotation and reference. These links (“tell me lies”) and forward to its nearly couple in Le Mépris to quote Viag- bear witness to the significance of quo- invisible but key place in Pierrot le Fou. gio, so Rossellini inserts into his film, tation as a modernist strategy and the It is because Ferdinand had allowed the without acknowledging the source, the way that a citation from the past works maid to go to Johnny Guitar that Mari- troubled marriage in James Joyce’s The as an aesthetic device precisely for the anne come to baby-sit and they meet Dead. Katherine retells Joyce’s story, as destruction of tradition and the genera- again “after five years”. though transposed to her own memory. tion of the modern. If the latent story of cinema exists, as She reminds Alex that she had once The blurb that accompanied the in a palimpsest, in another layer of time been loved by a young man who had London Consortium’s seminar on Le and meaning outside that of the fiction, then died; his sensibility and his poetry Mépris, specifically mentioned the enabling a detour into the quite differ- continue to haunt her and irritate Alex, film as “a fabric of quotations”. The ent discourse, it also doubles back on contributing to their deteriorating rela- phrase, coming from Roland Barthes’ an allegorical level into the film’s mani- tionship. Although Rossellini uses the 1967 essay The Death of the Author, is fest content. Just as the spectator strug- story for his own fiction, making no a reminder that Godard’s prolific and gles to decipher the film’s quotations, hint of its status as citation, it shares stylistic use of quotation and reference so Paul struggles to decipher Camille. something of Iampolski’s anomaly, predates its theorisation. The origin of Alongside, or overshadowed by, the inserting, due to a feeling of excess or the phrase, however, is also a reminder enigma of Camille and her desirability oddity, a kind of blockage into a text. that the search to trace the fragment are signs and clues suggesting that the Katherine’s monologue is quite long and the anomaly to its source can never cinema has a similar status for Godard and furnished with a few details that stabilise the uncertainty of meaning as enigma and elusive object of desire. belong to the original. Ultimately, Ros- or pin down the intention that lies at And on this allegorical level, Paul and sellini does provide a clue to its source the heart of quotation. Important and Camille’s lost love and their mutual in- through the couple’s name: Joyce. The minor instances will always remain ability to understand their emotional layering of references to a marriage in overlooked, hidden and unlocked. But, history relates to Godard’s sense of crisis across the Moravia’s novel, Ros- all the same, Godard’s use of allusion loss at the disappearance of the cinema sellini’s film and Joyce’s story create and reference, of palimpsest and liv- that had formed him so completely. an intertextual network that ends most ing quotation, creates a layered form of Just as Paul promises at the end of appropriately with Godard’s Le Mépris. film reading. The experience of watch- the film to become the writer he had From this perspective, the presence ing the film, for me, a cinéphile formed always wanted to be, out of the ruins of Viaggio in Italia in Le Mépris does by the Cahiers politique des auteurs, of his lost love, so Godard turned into considerably more than cite a director involves the triggering of memories a New Wave director, out of the ruins of the greatest importance to Godard. In and the recognition of the special sig- of his love of 1950s Hollywood cinema. Viaggio, the memory of the dead young nificance of films and directors cited. As always for Godard, the beauty and man acts as a figure for a more gen- For instance, the sudden, unmotivated inscrutability of his female star and of eral metaphor of haunting, but it also and anomalous reference to Nicholas cinema are fused in his aesthetic and acts as a figure for the ghostly nature Ray’s Johnny Guitar leads me back to erotic sensibility. Ultimately, the use of of quotation itself. The relationship of the particular emotional resonance quotation in Le Mépris shifts the uncer- Le Mépris to Viaggo in Italia, and its the film had for Cahiers-influenced ci- tainty of emotion to the spectator. The specific reference to Joyce generates a néphiles. And the reference links back uncertainties of attribution, the abrupt anomalies that erupt into the text, leave Figure 6. The story of Paul the spectator with a sense of yearning and Camille’s marriage for understanding, always conscious re-inscribes that of Emilia and Riccardo from the no- of just missing a point, contented with vel Il Dizprezzo, creating some moments of satisfied recognition. another temporal layer, just as any adaptation In addition to its modernist signifi- must necessarily hover cance, its layering of the text (as formal behind its retelling. / Courtesy of Paramount device and latent story), quotation puts Home Media Distribution the spectator into the situation of long- Spain ing and loss that characterises the feel- ing of the film as a whole. 

34 L’ ATALANTE JULY-DECEMBER 2014 Le Mépris and its story of cinema: a fabric of quotations

Notes * Edition Note: This article was first publis- hed in Colin MacCabe, Laura Mulvey (eds.) Critical Quarterly, Special Issue: Godard’s Contempt. Essays from the London Consor- tium., 53, July 2011. L’Atante. Revista de es- tudios cinematográficos thanks the author the licensing of the text, which is published for the first time in Spanish. L’Atante also thanks Paramount Home Media Distribu- tion Spain the authorisation for publishing the stills of Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963) illustrating these pages. 1 Tom Gunning analyses this anecdote and demonstrates that Lang elaborated it consi- derably over the years (Fritz Lang, p. 8–9).

Bibliography Aumont, Jacques (2000). Godard’s Le Mépris, in Susan Hayward and Ginette Vincendeau (eds.), French Film: Texts and Con- texts. London: Routledge. Godard, Jean-Luc (1968). Par Jean-Luc Godard. Paris: Editions Pierre Belfond. Gunning, Tom (2000). Fritz Lang. London: The British Film Institute. Iampolski, Mikhail (1998). The Memory of Tire- sias. Intertextuality and Film. San Francisco and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Marie, Michel (1990). Le Mépris. Paris: Edi- tions Nathan. Schatz, Thomas (1998). The Genius of the Sys- tem. Hollywood Film-making in the Studio Era. London: Faber and Faber. Wollen, Peter (1982). The Two Avant-gardes, Studio international, 190(978); reprinted in Peter Wollen (ed.) Readings and Writings: semiotic counter-strategies. London: Verso.

Laura Mulvey is Professor of Film at Birkbeck College, and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image. Her publications include: Visual and Other Pleasures (1989/2009), Fetishism and Curiosity (1996/2013), Citizen Kane (1996/2012), Death Twenty-four Times a Second (2006). Her films include, co-directed with Peter Wollen: Riddles of the Sphinx (1978/2013) and Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (1980); with Mark Lewis: Disgraced Monuments (1994) and 23 August 2008 (2013).

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