Paparazzi

Jean-Luc Godard met Jacques Rozier five years before directing Le Mépris (1963), when he discovered the latter’s Blue Jeans (1958). The friendship that birthed between the two Nouvelle Vague filmmakers led to Rozier filming Godard’s masterpiece. Le Mépris was highly anticipated as it marked the first collaboration between the young director and the monumental star of French cinema, Brigitte Bardot. Throughout the shooting, Bardot continuously faced the omnipresent lens of paparazzi, a term that has been born three years before with Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960). Rozier found the phenomenon to speak to his own artistic concerns: that of filming people the way they present themselves, that is, naturally fanciful. By using the paparazzi’s method on themselves, the film became a novelty in its form and a fascinating document of its time.