Early on in "Contempt," the legendary German director Fritz Lang, playing himself, growls at a movie screen: "Cinemascope-it's only good for snakes and funerals!" It's a wry joke that refers to Jean-Luc Godard's beginnings as cinematic rebel with a shaky movie camera who eschewed such Hollywood conventions as the wide screen format. But in 1964, he shot this, his first movie with star actors. The stunning Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance, and French leading man Michel Piccoli engage in a dance about those two things closest to the French director's heart: love and the movies. "Contempt," you guessed it, is shot in Cinemascope, and while there are neither snakes nor funerals in it, it is a work of austere beauty.

Paul (Piccoli) is the author of crime novels who takes a job writing a script for an all-powerful American producer (Jack Palance) shooting "Ulysses" in Italy under the direction of Fritz Lang. When Palance lays eyes on Paul's wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot), a subtle play of love, lust, and disgust unfolds--with tragic results. Exactly how Paul and Camille's story relates to Homer's Odyssey is only one of the many subtle riddles the film contains.

Visually and textually rich, by turns funny, tragic, moving, and unabashedly intellectual, "Contempt" constantly surprises. From the narrated credits on, nothing quite happens like you expect it to. The film begins in Rome's Cinecitta studios but then moves into a long second act that is confined to Paul and Camille's apartment. What began as an interesting peek into the realities of filmmaking turns into a claustrophobic chamber play about the dissolution of a marriage. The camera glides down hallways and peeks around corners as we watch the couple face up to their crumbling relationship. Finally, the action moves to the Island of Capri, where both the film shoot and the marital tragedy find their conclusion. The many layers of the film subtleties, along with its inviting surface, make "Contempt" a film that rewards repeat viewings.

Once again, the Criterion DVD edition is superlative-on two discs, the movie is accompanied by erudite commentary and lavish bonus materials, including interviews with Godard, Lang, and Bardot, as well as an insightful essay by Philip Lopate.