Struggling screenwriter Paul (Michel Piccoli) and gorgeous wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot) appear to be deliriously in love, but, one day – while meeting with a crass American producer (Jack Palance) about rewrites on a film version of Homer's Odyssey, to be directed by Fritz Lang (playing himself) – Paul commits a seemingly minor thoughtless action that makes Camille lose all affection and respect for him.

Loosely based on Alberto Moravia's novel A Ghost at Noon, this 1963 drama is the odd stepchild in Jean-Luc Godard's early filmography ... for the simple, ironic reason that it's the most conventional. It was a big-budget (by Godard standards) Technicolor/widescreen production with a major international star (Bardot) and an American producer (Joseph E. Levine). While most of the movie unfolds in a fairly straightforward form, Godard still can't resist playing around a little. The movie is full of long tracking shots: the very opening, set at the studio, is an almost dead-still take of Godard's cinematographer Raoul Coutard shooting a tracking shot. What he is shooting is not the film within the film, but is Contempt itself; the effect is that of a curtain rising on the action. Contempt was indifferently received at the time, but the years have been more than kind to it; now it seems a masterpiece. (Andy Klein)