And God… created woman.
And her name… was Brigitte Bardot. Rarely has a film title been more appropriate than that of the film Et Dieu… créa la femme which the French director Roger Vadim modeled around his then wife in 1956. She already had at least fifteen roles to her name, in some cases more scantily clad than in others, when he finally cast her in a film himself. Vadim was the one who put her on the cover of the French magazine in 1950 Elle ‘discovered’ an affair with her when she turned eighteen, proposed marriage and introduced her to the film world.
Et Dieu… créa la femme would be her big break. But the film and its title would also mark a milestone in the history of the way films viewed female protagonists, their bodies and their sexuality. At the time that was rash. But certainly not innocent. The word sex symbol did not have such a heavy meaning as it does today. Being watched was not yet synonymous with a form of objectification that reduces women to weak dolls.
As the sexually liberated Juliette Hardy, Bardot turned the heads of many men. Naked in the sun. Barefoot. We have almost forgotten Vadim’s name. But hers has proven to be imperishable. Still. Even more than 45 years after she had said goodbye to her film career during her lifetime, so that “the film would not leave her”.
The French actress has died at the age of 91, her foundation reported on Sunday. In the long second half of her life, she chose to give up her film career to devote her life to animal welfare and her foundation. In her hermitage just outside St. Tropez in the south of France, she created her own earthly paradise with her fourth husband, Bernard d’Ormale, known from the circles around the extreme right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen, and surrounded by eucalyptus trees and lavender bushes, where horses, chickens, pigs and cats were allowed to roam freely. From there she also made increasingly extremist comments on the world outside: #MeToo was attention-grabbing, Islam was dangerous, and everyone with a different skin color than her was inferior. It has earned her several fines for racist statements in the past few years.
Bardot in Paris, 2001.
Getty Images
Interesting for the tabloids
Born on September 28, 1934 into a wealthy Parisian family, Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot lived longer in the shadows than in the spotlight, although her increasingly politically eccentric and extreme behavior kept her interesting for the tabloids into old age. She filed a lawsuit against the French state to save two elephants from death, and, like Gérard Depardieu, threatened to take Russian nationality if she did not get her way.
Is it a stain on her memory or a consequence of her complicated relationship with showbiz and her rigorous choice to call it quits after 1973 and almost 50 film roles? How should we remember her?
There are few movie stars who are still as mythical-mystical as she is. Charlie Chaplin. Marilyn Monroe, to whom she was often called France’s answer. And so BB. Her initials were enough for her. What was then called a ‘frolic cat’ and a symbol of sexual liberation in one. Her almond-shaped eyes, always perfectly black-rimmed. And those lips, always ready to kiss you. That was the promise anyway. And those hairs, as if a mermaid had stolen them from the waves. With her headband, loose bun, Breton striped sweater, one shoulder exposed, exciting blouses in Vichy checks around the bosom and later the hippie chic of the sixties and seventies, she also became a fashion icon.
Brigitte Bardot in ‘Don Juan ou Si Don Juan était une femme…’, 1971.
ANP/Mary Evans Picture Library
Brigitte Bardot in ‘L’Ours Et La Poupee’, 1970.
ANP/Mary Evans Picture Library
Bardot in London, 1963.
ANP
Feminist icon
And there was more of course. Legs. Buttocks, Breasts. Would the God of the 1950s have imagined her as real as Eve? It’s a good thing she became immortal on the silver screen, just like Greta Garbo and Monroe before her. Forever solidified in her nymph-like years, so that we can still look at her with that first uninhibited look. Because if he had created her today he would have been accused of sexism.
That mix of self-evident physicality and addictive eroticism, that image of pouting girl and guileless seductress (whether willingly or not), also made her one of the most difficult actresses of the past century, especially in retrospect. Like Monroe, she did not want to be a sex object, but felt forced to play the game in order to feel taken seriously as a woman and actress.
Bardot (right) with Claudia Cardinale at the premiere of ‘Les Petroleuses’ in Paris, 1971.
AFP
Where they for the United States with the shortened and censored Et Dieu… personified sexual liberation, things were more complicated in their own country. We quickly forget that the film was not the huge box office success in France as we like to remember it.
The intelligentsia of nouvelle vague and existentialism initially looked down on her. That changed when Simone de Beauvoir wrote her for the American magazine in 1959 Esquire written passionate essay ‘Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome’ as both a feminist icon, but also described as the tragic duality of huntress and prey. Nowadays you would have to note that in order to be successful she had to dye her hair blonde and that the films for which she is now remembered have given her more than a free rein. Et Dieu… portrayed as victims, in a way that was not necessarily unambiguously feminist.
Bardot in London for the film ‘Une Ravissante Idiote’ in 1963.
Gamma Keystone via Getty Images
Depressions
Henri-Georges Clouzots La verite (1960) presented her as a femme fatale and murderer of passion. In the semi-autobiographical Vie private (1962), Louis Malle had her play an actress who dies in the flashlight of the paparazzi. Jean-Luc Godard also left her lifeless and bloodied in a bright red Alfa Romeo Le mepris (1963), also a film about film, about the clash between European art film and American commerce. In film and in real life, she was chased to the set by photographers. Fiction and reality are involved in a twisted dance. It later became known that she was already struggling with depression and low self-esteem during that period.
But the outside world saw the loves and affairs, the suitors and admirers (she was the mistress of actor Jean-Louis Trintignant and the muse of singer Serge Gainsbourg), and reveled in the disturbed relationship with her son (“I am not mature enough for motherhood”).
In public perception, her personal life and the roles she played became increasingly intertwined and the liberator of female sexuality became a prisoner of her own life and a feminism that she said she came to hate later in life. For her, everything revolved around her own freedom.
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