Brigitte Bardot was a force of the zeitgeist and France’s hottest export | Brigitte Bardot

forardot… There was a time when it was not possible to pronounce it without a pronounced frown on the second syllable. French headline writers liked to name the sexiest movie star in the world by her initials: “BB.” babya bit of weird baby talk for the tabloid pillow. When Brigitte Bardot retired from cinema in the mid-1970s, in favor of the cause of animal rights and a ban on the import of seal pups, the French press began calling her “Animal.” BB-fucka French homophone meaning “baby seal” with a bad hint of English pun. But the love affair between France and Bardot was on the verge of collapse, despite her fierce patriotism and admiration for Charles de Gaulle (the feeling was mutual). As its 21st-century animal rights campaign turned into an attack on halal meat, and then into scathing attacks on the alleged “Islamization” of France, its relations with the modern world increasingly deteriorated.

In the 1950s, before the sexual revolution, before the new wave, before feminism, there was Bardot: it was sex, it was youth, and most importantly, Bardot was modernity. It was an unrecognized zeitgeist force that stirred up cinematic youth like François Truffaut against the ancien régime. The Bardo was the country’s most exciting cultural export. She was, in fact, the French Beatle, the liberated, deliciously impudent screen lady who made American male moviegoers gulp and stare with desire in that Protestant land where screen sex was not yet commonplace, and where sex had to be presented in the staid solvent of comedy. Bardot may not have had the comedic skills of Marilyn Monroe, but she had a subtle charm and genuine charm, a gentleness and sweetness that was largely overlooked in the torrent of lust and sexual condescension.

She led the media-hungry industry as a cannibal, whose lovers and ex-husbands fought over her in the streets of Paris in front of photojournalists. But Bardot was half or three-quarters mad by this incessant interference. She was a public figure whose image was consumed not only through movies, but through magazine covers, paparazzi shots and gloating newspaper stories. Perhaps only Jennifer Aniston, in our time, has suffered from something similar.

After a number of roles in which her hair was brown, Bardot made her breakthrough in 1956, at the age of 22, in the very elegant romantic comedy And God Made Woman. She played a devastatingly desirable blonde, walking in a wasp-waisted figure, which was the last word in sex appeal in the 1950s. Her character appealed to an older man’s self-destructive obsession – which has become something of a trope in Bardot’s films – and she was desired by younger audiences, including, in an early role, the sober young Jean-Louis Trintignant, who was destined to be Bardot’s lover in real life. It was directed by Roger Vadim, Bardot’s then-husband, who controlled her personal and professional life.

Bardot has worked with serious filmmakers. Louis Malle directed her in Vie Privée, or Private Life (1961), in which she played a version of herself, the center of hysterical celebrity and voyeuristic rejection, with blonde Bardot clones everywhere on the streets of Paris, and her character making a horrific Princess Diana-type enemy at the hands of the media. But Bardot’s unfortunate fate was to be sponsored by the biggest name of all: Jean-Luc Godard. In Le Mépris or Contempt (1963), she played Camille, the beautiful wife of the troubled screenwriter Michel Piccoli. Bardot’s nudity is presented as a real example of cinema’s vulgar commercialism, but there is something cynical and misogynistic in Godard’s approach.

A smarter, more playful response to Bardot’s formidable persona came from Agnès Varda in her 1965 film Le Bonheur, or Happiness. Carpenter and his wife are thinking about going to see a movie starring Bardot and Jeanne Moreau (presumably Louis Malle’s Viva Maria! for which Bardot received a BAFTA nomination). His wife asks him who he prefers: Bardo or Moreau? He bravely replied that he preferred her to either of the film’s stars. Varda then makes a difficult cut of his workplace closet – covered with photographs of Bardot. Of course he prefers Bardot! Who didn’t?

As the 1960s continued, Bardot made a huge number of ruby ​​films, although fans had a soft spot for Shalako (1968), a rather bizarre Western she made with Sean Connery, whose haircut she reportedly found disturbing. But she then turned to political activism, one of the most intense French moments in the country’s post-war history. While skiing in Meribel in 1965, Bardot was frightened when Charlie, a German shepherd belonging to Alain Delon whom she was caring for, bit a fellow skier on the leg: the victim was none other than future French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who was stunned by Bardot’s extravagant apologies and the way she anointed his leg with ointment—turning him into an unlikely political ally. However, Bardot has been ridiculed for her campaigning for animals, even before she spent full time with them. Her home in Bazoches, near Paris (now the headquarters of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation), was a place where animals were allowed to roam inside: six goats, a dozen cats, a rabbit, 20 ducks, a donkey and some sheep. The smell was distinctive.

Bardot has made some great films. La Vérité, or The Truth (1960), directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, is a tumultuous courtroom drama in which Bardot’s character is put in the dock for murder. If her defense attorney can prove it wasn’t premeditated, she can get rid of French crime passion item. Flashbacks show her desolate life as a runaway, obsessed with the men who were obsessed with her, almost homeless, drawn into prostitution. Her character scandalizes the court when she reads Simone de Beauvoir’s racy novel The Mandarins. (De Beauvoir was a fan of Bardot.) It’s interesting, with a final, defiant speech from Bardot, denouncing the hypocrisy and cruelty of the older generation she criticizes.

But my favorite is En Cas de Malheur, or In Case of Emergency (1958), a brilliant crime melodrama adapted from a Georges Simenon thriller and directed by Claude Autant Lara. Bardot plays a woman accused of violent robbery who seduces her middle-aged lawyer into fabricating evidence to exonerate her. He plays the lawyer Jean Gabin, and there is a real, uneasy chemistry between these two icons of French cinema, old and new. Their scenes together have real tenderness and great impact, especially when Bardot’s character thinks she’s in love with her sweet but sarcastic older man – a great role for Jabin. “in the meantime!” She calls to heaven: We are happy! Seeing Bardot in this movie is enough to make you happy.