Long a symbol of glamour and desire, Brigitte Bardot’s image was forged in a cluster of cult films and pop duets. Here are three of the most memorable:
– ‘… And God Created Woman’ (1956) –
“And God created Brigitte Bardot” ran the headline in the Financial Times in 2009 when the actress turned 75, capturing the enduring connection between Bardot and the film that catapulted her to stardom as a sexually charged 18-year-old orphan in Saint Tropez.
The image of a bikini-clad, bronzed Bardot emerging from the sea was the “original epitome of the youthful sexuality that tanned itself on the Cote d’Azur once the austerity of war had worn off,” US film historian David Thomson said in his bestselling “The New Biographical Dictionary of Film” (1975).
Made by her husband at the time, Roger Vadim, the film was a hit both in France and the US, where it took in $4 million at the box office.
It inspire Simone de Beauvoir in 1960 to say, “BB now deserves to be considered an export product as important as Renault automobiles.”
– ‘Contempt’ (1965) –
Jean-Luc Godard’s arthouse classic set on the island of Capri opened with what would become one of Bardot’s most famous scenes but also her most subversive: intercut shots of her body as she lies on a bed in a dark room, asking her husband, “Which part of me do you like best”?
Bardot’s full naked figure is never shown as Godard resisted the demands of his producers, and in doing so encouraged a more critical gaze on the sexualised Bardot body on screen.
Playing a jilted wife whose disdain for her husband swells as the film progresses, “Contempt” was one of Bardot’s rare critically acclaimed films, with The New York Times praising it as her best acting performance.
– ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1968) –
Bardot had a brief and tumultuous affair with legendary French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg.
Their dalliance gave rise to a track based on a poem written by the notorious US outlaw Bonnie Parker, before she and her partner in crime Clyde Barrow were shot dead.
For the video clip of the duet shot in a hay barn, Gainsbourg and Bardot dressed as the legendary pair, with Bardot donning a black beret, dragging on a cigarette and clutching a machine gun around her neck.
The single was from an album of the same name that reached number 12 on the Billboard Top 200.
Gainsbourg also first recorded his famously steamy “Je t’aime… moi non plus” duet with Bardot but she later opposed its release.
He re-recorded the hit with Jane Birkin.
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© Agence France-Presse
