Her hair was a wild mess and her skirt slit to the waist, but the mambo dance that Brigitte Bardot performed in “And God Created Woman” became an overnight sensation in the staid 1950s.
Bardot created a “sex kitten” myth that outraged French censors.
The scene, both innocent and provocative, was the embodiment of a looming sexual revolution. It was one Bardot, who has died aged 91, never lived down nor really sought to.
Shot in 1956 in Saint-Tropez, which later became her home and refuge, “And God Created Woman” remained one of her great cinema memories.
She told AFP in an interview on the 60th anniversary of Roger Vadim’s film that Saint-Tropez was then “an authentic village still far removed from the frenzied crowds, full of charm, fishermen, and a southern accent”.
She said she hated it when the filming ended and she was separated from Vadim, whom four years earlier had become the first of her four husbands.
In her feverish mambo, Bardot who played carefree teenager Juliette, captivated three potential suitors played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, Christian Marquand, and Curt Jurgens.
For the first time in French cinema, a woman expressed her desire on equal footing with a man.
Moral crusaders were outraged and censors ordered some suggestive scenes including one of oral sex performed on a woman be cut.
But “BB”, as she became known in her home country, became a role model for many French women.
– ‘Don’t give a damn’ –
In real life, Bardot in public displayed the same freedom as Juliette “a girl of her time, free from all feelings of guilt, from all taboos imposed by society,” according to Vadim.
“With her free-spirited character, and her freedom over her body, she spoke to the women of that era. BB was one of the powerful symbols in a period of asceticism, with a desire to shake things up,” said Francoise Picq, a historian of feminism.
Sixty years after the release of “And God Created Woman”, Bardot was still amused by the scandal it created.
“It was funny because, in the end, there’s nothing shocking about it,” she said.
“The mambo I danced was completely improvised. I gave free rein to my instincts. I danced as I felt like it, captivated by the music, that’s all!”
But Bardot, who was later criticised by some for her far-right wing views and five times punished in court for her comments, said she did not seek to champion the emancipation of women that the film helped to inspire.
“I don’t give a damn,” she said in the 2016 interview.
Protecting animals, her passion in later life, was far more important.
Bardot in 2018 criticised the #MeToo campaign denouncing the abuse of women.
“Feminism isn’t my thing,” she told AFP in another interview earlier this year, defending French actor Gerard Depardieu before a court found him guilty of sexual assault.
– ‘Wonderful way to break up’ –
“I’ve never been one for complicated thinking, and I loved this role that was written specifically for me,” she said in the 2016 interview.
The BB phenomenon that the film created “hit me like a ton of bricks!” she declared, adding that she had never expected the success.
Vadim maintained that he let Bardot “play, with her flaws and her strengths, a character not exactly her own, but corresponding to her nature.”
“I found Vadim sublimely handsome, but I never would have thought he would fall in love with me,” she said of the director. “Everything I’ve learned, I learned with him.”
But “And God Created Woman” spelled the beginning of the end of their relationship.
The couple divorced on December 6, 1957, a year after the film’s release.
During filming, Bardot fell in love with Trintignant.
“The film was our artistic child. It was a wonderful way to break up,” Vadim said.
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