Passion

The precursor is not La Nuit américaine but Pasolini's "La Ricotta" (RoGoPaG), whence the tableaux vivants and the central metaphor. The Polish exile (Jerzy Radziwilowicz) at "the best and costliest studio in Europe," recreating the Old Masters. The parallel edifice is a factory, where the virginal prole (Isabelle Huppert) clashes with the fractious boss (Michel Piccoli). He's married to the Teutonic hotel owner (Hanna Schygulla) who's having an affair with the cinéaste, just a clothesline on which Jean-Luc Godard hangs what's on his mind, the Solidarity movement and the clutch of commerce and the sheer labor that goes into cinema's "magic." "You know, I realize it's best to live through stories before creating them." Le Mépris two decades later is a continuous adjustment of mise en scène, space and lighting and choreography made gorgeously visible and abstract. No rules in filmmaking, or maybe a couple, "minimal works canceled out by absolute boredom." Call to Hollywood, splenetic producers demanding a plot to go with the images. To be a director means stepping down from the craning camera and wrestling an angel, "vraie lumière," something to be guided by. The refuge of classical art (Rembrandt, Goya, Delacroix, El Greco, Ingres), Falconetti close-ups and nymphs in the swimming pool. A gag composition (twirling waitress, runaway knife, the Olympics on the telly), "the thoroughly-calculated approximations of verisimilitude." Mozart and Fauré, also Huppert's stutter and harmonica and Piccoli's hacking cough. The hungover beauty on the video monitor, the ship in the forest (Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes), snowy roads everywhere. The wry punchline is that you can't go home again. "I'm looking for something final to say, but I can't find anything." Cinematography by Raoul Coutard. With László Szabó, Myriem Roussel, and Sophie Lucachevski.