This should be by far the easiest Godard film to understand. The title of the film expresses the heroine's contempt for the hero's behavior, as well as Godard's contempt for the producer and Hollywood as a director.
1. The essence of film
This film is a story about making a movie, so it also indirectly expresses some of Godard's views on the nature of the movie. The producer exploded when he thought the director’s footage was unsatisfactory, saying: There are only words in the script, but there are pictures on the screen, and the pictures and things are what we want. This sentence explains the difference between film and novel. The film language uses pictures and actions to interpret the plot of the novel, making it more expressive and attractive.
2. Expression method
When Godard edited again this time, he added some flashbacks, which was rare in those days. Let us understand what the heroine and the producer did during that time through a few simple pictures to prove that she did not lie to the hero.
3. Intertextual structure
There are two intertexts in the film:
The first is the story in the Odyssey that the old director and the male protagonist talked about when they were discussing the story. Ulysses left her through the Trojan War because of a conflict with Penelope, and Penelope was no longer there because of his behavior. Love him, start to despise him. This is completely an epic version of the current state of life of the hero and heroine. In the end, Ulysses killed the suitor in order to save his wife's love, indicating that the male protagonist should kill the producer in the end, so the ending of the producer and female protagonist being hit by a truck is actually an unfinished business.
The second is the last female protagonist stripped naked on the beach, corresponding to the beginning she stripped naked on the bed, flirting with the male protagonist in the same posture. It means that the heroine completely gave up on the hero, and broke off with him in the form of the first encounter.
4. The first contempt
The first kind of contempt is the contempt of the heroine by the heroine. The male protagonist said that he did not understand the behavior of the female protagonist several times: the first time was that he did not understand why the female protagonist did not go to the filming location with him. In fact, it was because the female protagonist hated the producer, but the male protagonist thought it was because He molested the producer secretary. The second time was that the male protagonist didn't understand why the female protagonist went to sleep on the sofa. In fact, it was because the male protagonist deceived the female protagonist's mother. In order to know if she went out to eat at noon, the female protagonist was angry. The third time the male protagonist didn't understand why she didn't have sex with him, but it was actually because the female protagonist began to hate him and stopped loving him. The last time is that the male lead can't understand why the female lead doesn't love him anymore.
From the very beginning, the male protagonist deliberately let the female protagonist and the producer get along alone in order to get closer to the producer, to the four times he did not understand, the female protagonist's love for him gradually disappeared, and he gradually began to despise him. In the end, the heroine agreed to go to the filming location with him. In addition to wanting to test him one last time, she also wanted to get revenge on him. In the end, the male protagonist was still using her. She deliberately let the male protagonist see her kissing the producer. As a result, the male protagonist began to regret it and wanted to save the female protagonist by terminating the contract, but it was too late. In the end, the heroine and the producer flew away and realized their revenge against him.
5. The second kind of contempt
This contempt is the director's contempt for producers and Hollywood.
After the producer was furious, he wrote a check to the male protagonist. The old director said: In those horrible years, Italians often said "revolver" to refer to "checkbook", satirizing the producer or saying that capital used money to force The director or screenwriter will create according to their requirements.
In the theater, the producer asked the male protagonist to find inspiration to revise the script based on the drama. The old director asked the female protagonist: Do you think this is what the producer meant or what he meant. It also satirizes the producer's interference in the creation.
Then the old director said: Every morning I will go to buy bread, I will go to the market where there is bread to buy, and I would like to join the ranks of other salesmen.
Hostess: What is that?
Old Director: Hollywood.
This passage criticized Hollywood's studio system, satirizing that they made and sold movies as commodities and lost the artistic value of the movies themselves.
After leaving the theater, the old director said: I can easily do what producers do. Satire producers are ignorant and only point fingers at the creators.
6. Feminism
This film should be the strongest female resistance in Godard's film. From the very beginning, he obeyed the male protagonist, got into the producer's car, began to resist the male protagonist, and finally got revenge on the male protagonist and eloped with the producer.
In fact, it is not that the male protagonist does not understand the behavior of the female protagonist. The female protagonist once said that he is very smart. He just regarded the heroine as his possession, and felt that she should completely surrender to himself and be loyal to himself. So when the heroine disagreed with him, he hit the heroine back, not once or twice. When the heroine left the house, he even took out a gun and wanted to kill the heroine. Because he thinks the heroine is his property and should not leave the host. So the book of his that the heroine read said: I love a woman, and if she betrays her, I will kill her.
The relationship between the heroine and the hero is a microcosm of that era. But with the awakening of female consciousness, the female protagonist began to make choices, gradually relying on the male protagonist's control, and even began to take revenge on him. But ironically, like the heroine of "Do As You Like It," she lost her life.
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