by Stephen Vagg
The passing of Brigitte Bardot has prompted many people to wonder, “Um… Why was she famous again?” After all, she hadn’t made a movie since 1973, and whenever her name had been in the media in recent years, it was typically due to some controversial issue, like ranting against Muslims or the queer community. But for almost two decades – specifically 1956 until the early 1970s – Brigitte Bardot was one of the biggest movie stars in the world.
This was, in part, because of her beauty and style, not to mention a colourful private life full of suicide attempts and lovers, and her whole “symbolising of an era/culture/mood” thing. But it was also due to her movies – Bardot was a genuine box office powerhouse, whose presence drew audiences into cinemas around the world, many of whom had never seen a French film before (and wouldn’t see one again).
Here’s a quick primer of our top ten favourite Brigitte Bardot movies. It’s not meant to be an exhaustive list, but it might be a useful jumping off point for anyone wondering what the fuss was about.
Manina the Girl in the Bikini (1952)
Bardot’s photogenic beauty saw her enjoy early success as a model (she was on the cover of Elle magazine by the time she was fifteen), which in turn led to a film career – there are always gigs going for pretty girls. Manina the Girl in the Bikini was her second film; she was only seventeen and doesn’t appear until the movie is almost half over, but once she does, you can’t take your eyes off her. It’s clear that from the beginning, Brigitte Bardot simply had It – charisma, presence, incredible sex appeal, all that stuff.
The actual leading man is Jean-Francois Calve, who plays a uni student diving for ancient Roman treasure off the coast of Corsica; Bardot is a lighthouse keeper’s daughter who spends most of her time running around in a bikini and diving off cliffs. Bardot is very beautiful and she sings a dubbed song. Watch her – it’s lightning in a bottle.
Doctor at Sea (1955)
During the 1950s, American and British films liked to populate their casts with European starlets, and Bardot popped up in several English-language movies before she was really famous, such as Act of Love (1953), Helen of Troy (1956) and this one, a British sequel to the Dirk Bogarde comedy smash Doctor in the House (1954). It was made by the team of producer Betty Box and director Ralph Thomas, who had tried to get Bardot for A Day to Remember (1953), only to have been turned down by the actress, who felt her English was too limited (Odile Versois stepped in instead; later on, they used the Bardot-ish Mylene Demongeot).
Doctor at Sea is breezy ‘50s British fun – in colour, full of high spirits, an accomplished cast well led by Dirk Bogarde, which cleverly rehashes events of the first film by redoing them at sea. Bogarde spends the majority of the film avoiding women, even Bardot, who is very cute and winning, like the whole movie really. It’s a sweet relic of a bygone era.
Naughty Girl (1956)
Most of Bardot’s early French films were melodramas (Caroline and the Rebels, School for Love, The Grand Maneuver, The Light Across the Street), but she became a star appearing in this musical comedy. She was cast in the lead at the recommendation of her husband Roger Vadim, who was called in to rewrite the script.
The plot involves a lot of set up, but basically Brigitte’s dad runs a nightclub, and he asks singer Jean Bretonniere to look after his little girl while he tries to find out who is running a forgery operation out of his nightclub. Cue lots of cute antics with Brigitte wrecking havoc – setting things on fire, clashing with Bretonniere’s butler, winding up in jail and then on stage doing a musical number, fighting off gangsters, etc. It’s formulaic and silly, but is a lot of fun, production values are high (colour, CinemaScope), and the support cast includes people like Francoise Fabian and Mischa Auer. Bardot is in terrific form, running around and pouting, getting into mischief.
Naughty Girl actually made more money at the French box office than And God Created Woman (discussed below) and it’s not hard to see why – that later film is more for adults while this is more a family picture, the sort of thing you could easily imagine Debbie Reynolds starring in at MGM or Sonja Henie in one of her films. Vadim called Naughty Girl “a French equivalent of a Doris Day movie but with a bolder, more liberated edge.”
Director Michel Boisrond later made The Parisian (1957) and Come Dance with Me (1959) with Bardot. Vadim went on to write a similar bright Hollyood-ish comedy for her, Plucking the Daisy (1956) which was also popular – but it was their third cinematic collaboration that turned Brigitte Bardot into an international phenomenon.
And God Created Woman (1956)
There are few better star entrances in cinematic history than Brigitte Bardot’s in this movie – sunbaking naked next to a sheet as she chats to Curt Jurgens. This is a brilliantly constructed star vehicle, with Roger Vadim (making his debut as a film director) beautifully exploiting Bardot’s persona. She pouts, wiggles, lolls about topless on a yacht, sunbakes, listens to romantic songs, dances evocatively to jazz, and generally runs riot.
The plot isn’t hugely original but has plenty of meat: Curt Jurgens wants to build a casino but is stopped by brothers Christian Marquand and Jean Louis Trintignant who own a boat yard; Brigitte loves Marquand who isn’t keen on her until she marries his doting brother Trintignant. She winds up in a storm with Marquand, and they have sex on the beach, then when she gets back, struggles to readjust.
It gets very French towards the end (i.e. melodramatic and sexist): Trintignant goes to shoot Bardot but is stopped by Jurgens who takes a bullet in the hand but shrugs it off as the price of love; Trintignant smacks Bardot a few times in the face but she seems to respect him for it, and they go off into the sunset together. Marquand and Jurgens leave town, with Jurgens commenting that that woman was born to cause trouble, and that maybe Trintignant will get over Bardot in time.
The colour photography and St Tropez settings are gorgeous. If you watch this in the right spirit, it’s great fun – Bardot is a star, Vadim clearly adores her, and there is strong support from the three guys – Trintignant, Marquand and Jurgens are all good, masculine rivals.
And God Created Woman was a sensation internationally, becoming the biggest foreign-language film ever in the United States at the time. It cost something like $300,000 and grossed over $30 million. In 1958, US exhibitors voted Brigitte Bardot the eighth biggest box office star in the country, entirely on the basis of French-language movies… the only time that’s ever happened (i.e. a foreign star cracking the top ten based on non-English movies.)
Vadim and Bardot tried to make lightning strike twice with The Night Heaven Fell (1958), but despite or because of imported co-star Stephen Boyd, it lacked the same impact.
Sidebar: Vadim made another film called And God Created Woman in 1988 starring Rebecca de Mornay, but it has an entirely different plot.
Love is My Profession (1958)
After her success with Curt Jurgens in And God Created Women, Bardot made a string of movies where she was teamed with an older, famous, European male actor – The Parisian (1957) with Charles Boyer, The Bride is Much Too Beautiful (1958) with Louis Jourdan, and this melodrama, with Mister Establishment in French cinema, Jean Gabin. She plays a thief; he’s a lawyer defending her, who becomes infatuated with his client. The movie – which is solid – is famous for a scene where Bardot seduces Gabin by lying against a desk, hiking up her skirt to him… showing the audience her backside and Gabin what was on the other side. Ooh la la!
Sidebar: Director Claude Autant-Lara later became a rampant anti-semite for the National Front. If you think Hollywood types like Jon Voight are problematic, try reading up on French cinematic legends like Claude Autant-Lara, Alain Delon and, well, Brigitte Bardot.
Babette Goes to War (1959)
After a series of sexy blockbusters, Bardot kept her clothes on and returned to playing an innocent cutie in this fun comedy. She’s a girl who flees France in 1940 and joins the Free French Forces; they get her cleaning floors and working on the phones but she’s keen to do more, so she’s parachuted back into France to help try and stop the German invasion of England. That’s a fantastic idea and Bardot is immensely appealing with her pout and cuteness as she wears tin helmets, does pratfalls, tries on wigs, etc
Roger Vadim wasn’t allowed to direct this, apparently because of the disappointing reception to The Night Heaven Fell; Christian-Jaque stepped in instead. Bardot went on to marry her co-star Jacques Charrier. This was a big hit in France.
The Truth (1960)
This movie was meant to show the world that Bardot could act, as if that mattered, but it’s still a brilliantly constructed star vehicle. She plays a Bardot type – a free spirit who loves a good time and hates working, who managed to get permission from her parents to move to Paris via a suicide attempt (the real-life Bardot threatened to kill herself when she wanted to marry Roger Vadim). She has a good girl sister whose dull but handsome musician boyfriend (Sami Frey) Bardot seduces in part by rolling around naked underneath a sheet pouting. When he caves, their relationship suffers because she refuses to be tied down. They break up, she becomes a prostitute while he becomes famous, and she realises that she made a mistake of letting him go.
This is very well directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot – beautifully shot, with excellent actors and photography. Bardot is tremendous – sexy, charismatic, believable as a spoilt sexpot and enraged woman. Her final scene is very moving. The Truth was a huge hit in France and Britain, though less so in the US where the shine was coming off her a little.
The story of the making of this movie is fascinating – Clouzot bullied his stars; original male lead Philippe Leroy-Beaulieu was fired and sued the production; Bardot had an affair with Frey which resulted in her husband Jacques Charrier having a nervous breakdown and attempting suicide; Frey and Charrier got in a brawl; Bardot’s secretary sold secrets about her boss to the press; Bardot later tried to kill herself; Clouzot’s wife (co-writer of the script) had a breakdown and later died of a heart attack… No wonder Bardot was such a massive star – every movie she made, there was an excellent chance of drama off screen. Oh and Raoul Levy, who produced this and many other Bardot films, later committed suicide in Saint Tropez after a series of flops and financial reversals and being dumped by his girlfriend.
Contempt (1963)
In the early 1960s, Bardot kept trying to work with better directors, making A Very Private Affair (1962) with Louis Malle as well as getting back with Vadim for Please Not Now (1961) and Love on a Pillow (1962). For Contempt, she collaborated with none other than Jean-Luc Godard. The film centres around Michel Piccoli, who plays a writer hired by producer Jack Palance to work on an adaptation of The Odyssey. Piccoli’s also married to Brigitte Bardot; instead of being grateful and taking what he can get, he whinges and worries, so she runs off with Palance. This film is overrated in our humble opinion, but people really love it; it’s certainly worth watching. Bardot would later cameo in Godard’s Masculin Feminine (1966).
Viva Maria (1965)
Neither Jeanne Moreau or director Louis Malle were known as Captain Comedy, but this buddy western pastiche is a lot of fun, helped considerably by the presence of Bardot in the lead. She plays the daughter of an Irish revolutionary who dies throwing bombs at the British somewhere in South America in the early 20th century; at a loss what to do next, Bardot joins a theatre troupe featuring Moreau and the two of them form a stage act which involves accidentally inventing the striptease. The two of them do this for a while, singing cute songs (this movie is kind of a musical), while Bardot discovers the joy of sex and it’s all very Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. They are captured by dictatorial forces, Moreau falls instantly in love with captured revolutionary George Hamilton (looking handsome and speaking decent enough French in what is a surprisingly small role) and gets politicised – she and Bardot then help lead a revolution. There are some treacherous priests, pompous generals, a fun group of strolling players, plenty of gags.
Viva Maria goes for too long and is misshapen but is full of irreverence and good spirits, not to mention a liberated attitude to sex (the lead girls have passions and aren’t punished for following them) which help the film age well. Bardot is particularly bright and the two stars have an excellent rapport. Photography, costumes and production values are top notch.
Apparently the film was inspired by the buddy Western Vera Cruz which also inspired the boy buddy gangster flick Borsalino (1969) – but the girls got in first. Bardot tried to make lighting strike twice with The Legend of Frenchie King (1972) with Claudia Cardinale, but it didn’t work.
This was a period when Bardot was aiming her career at international audiences – in addition to making Contempt with Jack Palance and Viva Maria with George Hamilton, she co-starred with Anthony Perkins in The Ravishing Idiot (1964), had a cameo as herself in the comedy Dear Brigitte (1965) (the highlight of an unfunny movie), appeared in the set-in-Britain-part-financed-by-the-Rank-Organisation Two Weeks in September (1967) (a dull movie), made the excellent all-star anthology Spirits of the Dead (1968) (appearing opposite Alain Delon in a segment directed by Malle), and was in the Sean Connery Western Shalako (1968). Viva Maria is more fun than any of them.
Don Juan or if Don Juan was a Woman (1973)
Bardot’s last years as a star saw her in a string of unremarkable, not very ambitious films – The Vixen (1969), The Bear and the Doll (1970), The Beginner (1970), Rum Runners (1971), The Legend of Frenchie King (1972), The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot (1973) and this effort, her penultimate film. It reunites her with Roger Vadim, who had since hooked up and made films with Annette Stroyberg, Catherine Deneuve, and Jane Fonda, but who never enjoyed the success he did with Bardot.
The plot sees Bardot as a sexually voracious woman who takes many lovers, including Jane Birkin, which is probably the most memorable thing about it. There’s a lot of drivel dialogue about the nature of men and women, and the ending, where Bardot burns to death, feels like the inevitable triumph of misogyny. Still, it’s kind of appropriate that this is how Bardot wrapped up her film career, i.e. being the best thing about a not particularly good movie.
Vale Brigitte Bardot. Few stars were more charismatic.
