And God Created Woman (movie 1956)

It’s well known that this film made the careers of Brigitte Bardot, and its director Roger Vadim – as well as put Saint Tropez on the map.

Less well known is that it was an early film of Jean Louis Trintignant, arguably France’s finest post war screen actor with whom Bardot had an affaire whilst married to Vadim.

I was motivated to watch if after the series “BARDOT” on Channel 4.

In it Bardot is played by Argentinian actress Julia Perez and, although she has the pout, she doesn’t have the figure.

In “AND GOD CREATED WOMAN” Bardot plays the orphan Juliette. She is à free spirit: sexy and sexual, vulnerable, lover of animals – much like her in real life, though her parents were bourgeois Parisiens.

Vadim made the film on a low budget even though it had a starry cast that included Curt Jurgens.

This may be why La Bardot – unlike Audrey Hepburn and her Italian contemporaries Claudia Cardinale, Sophia Loren and Gina Lollabrigida – was not attired glamorously.

What she had was unabashed sex appeal. She was a trained ballerina and one of the best sequences is when she danced carefree and uninhibited to the bongo drums in a At Tropez cafe. Leslie Caron was in the same ballet class. Not many people know that.

How does one assess her career?

Undoubtedly she was one of the few French film actresses to acquire an international reputation – her Ballet class mate Leslie Caron was another.

Her best rôle was in “LE MEPRIS”, directed by Jean Luc Godard, with the familiar French features of a menage-à -trois with Jack Palance and her scriptwriter husband Michel Piccoli and again another French trait of à film within a film – in this case director Fritz Lang filming in Capri.

She was directed by the great Henri Georges Clouzot but retired young to devote herself to animal rights and causes.

After divorcing Roger Vadim she had a fling with Gilbert Bécaud, a singer whose song featured in ‘AND GOD CREATED WOMAN”, married Jaques Charrier – by whom she had a child Nicolas – and after that marriage ended she met and married the German playboy Gunter Sachs.