But Contempt is much more than a good-natured romp through studio in-jokes. Framed by the giddy fun of the filmmaking scenes, a quieter, deeper tale of abrogated responsibility, fading emotions, and fatal indecision unfolds in a small Roman apartment. Writer Paul (Michel Piccoli) insists to his beautiful wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot) that he is only taking the Odyssey job to pay for their new digs and to make her happy. But Camille's love for him turns to contempt when he knuckles under to Prokosh at their first meeting, using the American's interest in his wife as leverage for getting a job.

The tortuous thread of their marriage unravels slowly, over a single half-hour scene at the heart of the film. Back and forth go their arguments, like a lamp Paul turns on and off, like the wig that turns Bardot's hair from blond to brunette at a whim. It's not until the third act, on the Odyssey set in Capri, that we understand what draws Paul to this material: Like Ulysses as interpreted by the screenwriter himself, he prefers to push decisions off onto others, as if he's doing them a favor, and then call the results "fate." If the viewer reads this back into the apartment scene, the movie transcends its navel-gazing obsession with movies and becomes as universal as Homer's epic.

Certainly among Godard's most accessible films, Contempt features Bardot's most famous performance, as a wife who consents to be used because her reliance on her husband--who plucked her out of the typing pool--is absolute. Fans of Lang will enjoy his offhand remarks about his own career ("Personally, I prefer M"), especially as a world-weary European foil to Prokosh's delusions of grandeur. And Palance hits exactly the right note, with hilarious and tragic effect, as the ugly American who aims to improve on Homer and German expressionism.

The 1997 restoration and rerelease of Contempt also demonstrates with fresh vigor Godard's way with color. Utilizing a unified palette that ranges from the ancient daylight of Rome to the cerulean blue of the Mediterranean to the lipstick-red sofa in Paul and Camille's modernist apartment, the director views Europe as a place where technology and style have changed nothing important in human nature since the dawn of time. Contempt may be a lark when compared to Godard's more challenging works, but it still plumbs depths unknown to other filmmakers.