The action begins in black and white, like a memory. Klaus is a Nazi military who has just failed an attempt on Hitler. Desperate, Klaus shoots and kills his children and then shoots at his pregnant wife and leaves her badly injured. Finally, attempts suicide, but at the last moment does not have the courage to pull the trigger, and flees on a motorcycle, having an accident ... The action continues in France. Jean-Claude is a handsome young man self-conscious about a malformation in his face. Jean-Claude lives with his parents, Jacques Bergé, an amnesiac man, self-enclosed and obsessed with Egyptian art, and Concepcion, a woman also closed in herself and obsessed with flowers from her garden, and apparently , suffering from paranoia.

A sort of peewee, home-movie CONTEMPT, GRANDEUR ET DECADENCE is Godard's look at what happens during the making of a cheapo TV movie--i.e., he took on an assignment to make a cheapo TV movie, and in typical fashion gave the process the skewer. The emphasis here is on the real faces and real voices of real people--actors seen in a poignant juxtaposition of their headshots and their real, peeved, fragile selves. One of the most energetic, funniest and oddly touching of recent Godards, this is extraordinarily hard to find, and worth the hunt.