Word: piccoli
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...shows this ascetic a vision of a modern day "black mass," taking him inside a noisy, sweaty, rockin' 1960s discotheque! "The Milky Way," Bunuel's final statement on Catholicism, is an episodic exploration of noted historical heretics, including Buñuel's professed "master," the Marquis de Sade (Michel Piccoli). Two pilgrims en route to a Spanish shrine travel from era to era, and also have "visions" (including one of a jovial, chuckling Christ chiding his stern Apostles) as they try to sort out what, if any, of the things they're hearing are true...
...story, adapted from a short novel by the Honore de Balzac, follows a soldier named Augustin Robert (Ben Daniels) who is sent to Egypt in 1798 as the guide and protector of Jean-Michel (Michel Piccoli) an important artist/historiographer. Jean-Michel is on an official mission to draw, measure and document the cultural landmarks of the Egyptian dunes. Of course, the military party with whom he travels are little concerned with monuments or cave-drawings. They have been yanked from their homes and families to conduct a miserable campaign against the Mameluke Dynasty, marching around the desert with their camels...
Contempt is hardly Godard's best or most evocative work, but it exposes his feelings for the seductive lie of movies: that "cinema replaces our gaze with a world in harmony with our desires" (the same line is quoted in For Ever Mozart). A French playwright (Michel Piccoli) is hired for a rewrite job by an American producer (Jack Palance) who has eyes for the writer's sexy wife (Brigitte Bardot). With its polyglot cast and mixed-doubles leering, Contempt gets the Babel and Babylon of filmmaking down perfectly...
...film's own behind-the-scenes story is also instructive. When producer Carlo Ponti saw the finished film, he was upset at the absence of Bardot nudity. Godard then shot the famous opening scene, of Bardot asking Piccoli if he likes her eyes, breasts, ass--a catalog that commercializes her body, just as Ponti demanded--and Piccoli replying that he loves her "totally, tenderly, tragically...
...from the Senate at the end of next year [CAMPAIGN '96, Aug. 28], said he was tired of working in a political system that was broken. That statement is despicable. The New Jersey Senator's hopeless pessimism is a slam-dunk in the faces of his constituency. ALFRED ("SONNY") PICCOLI Bloomfield, New Jersey...