The adaptation of Le Mépris (Moravia/Godard): architectural aspects

Abstract

Il disprezzo, novel by Alberto Moravia, and Le Mépris, film by Jean-Luc Godard. There is always an intermediate step: it is the script, written but already prefiguring moving images. We can consider it both hypotext of the novel and hypertext of the film. In Liliana Cavani’s film La pelle, the Malaparte house is necessarily the same as in its owner’s autobiographic novel, where it appears and is explicitly described. However in the case of Le Mépris it is a choice of Godard, since the reference to the house in the novel only prefigures that the house is in Capri and has nice views to Punta Campanella. As we will see some of the locations, when adapting to the configuration of the Malaparte, extract from its architecture specific original possibilities of the film and in some way they bring new approaches of greater plasticity to the scenes while, however, the dialogues between the characters remain almost intact. One example is the way in which a singular element such as the upper terrace of the house replaces the beach where Molteni, the screenwriter, finds his wife Emilia. The same terrace appears as well as the set of the Odyssey version that begins to be shoot precisely at the end of Le Mépris.