Godard's Le Mépris is one of my favorite meta-movies (films about the making of films), and one of my favorite blogs is languagehat. So imagine my pleasure and surpise when I ran across this entry [via Google] in a previous incarnation of languagehat. Compounded with this is the fact that I'd been holding off writing my own entry about Hanns Johst's quotation, "Wenn ich Kultur höre, entsichere ich meinen Browning!" which is usually credited to Goering. Hélas! The Alberto Moravia novel, Il Disprezzo, on which the movie is based is called in English Ghost at Noon. It's a good read, but the movie is better. I remember seeing Jack Palance interviewed on TV, and how he become speechless in a rage about how Godard had directed him (badly). A funny thing about this polyglot movie is how the dubbed version had to invent lines for the translator who repeats substantial amounts of dialog in Italian, German, English, and French for the other characters. Godard allegedly punched Carlo Ponti, one of the producers, at the premiere.
[Addendum, 06/20/03: Here's the newer, MT link straight from LH.]
Thanks for the kind words, and I'm glad to meet a fellow Godard fan! The MT version of the entry is here:
http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000398.php
(It's... interesting that as soon as I switched from Blogger to MT my Google hits dropped almost to zero. Couldn't have anything to do with Google's purchase of Blogger, could it? Naaah...)
Good old Hans Lucas, he's the man! He's made some great flicks! I like his stuff, new and old. Supposedly, Tarrantino put Godard's King Lear on his resume, and figured correctly that nobody would or could call him on it.
Posted by: jim on June 20, 2003 09:55 AM