Jean-Luc Godard’s classic 1963 film Contempt— his most commercially successful feature— is best known for its leading lady, ‘sex kitten’ Brigitte Bardot, the main event in an all-star cast that included Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, and the legendary director Fritz Lang. It also has the pedigree of its source material: a novel by Alberto Moravia; the sun, sand, and sea of the dazzling Isle of Capri; the modernist Casa Malaparte as its indelible final location; and Godard himself, the foremost exponent of the New Wave, here deconstructing a marriage, a myth, the act of selling out, and cinema itself. But the lavish production of Contempt also served as a springboard for a pair of illuminating short black-and-white films by Jacques Rozier, capturing the zeitgeist of that singular moment now available on Criterion Channel.

Godard and Rozier had become friendly in the late 1950’s (see them in the back row in this historic image above of the New Wave directors after the Cannes Film Festival of 1959) and Godard accepted Rozier’s proposal to film a behind-the-scenes record of Contempt. But once on set Rozier had another idea. Learn what happened in my story this week for Air Mail.