Initials B.B. (1934-2025)

[yoloswegmaster]

Brigitte Bardot

[Mr Sausage]

Brigitte Bardot

Contempt is the only thing I’ve seen her in, apparently, but she’s splendid in it. Anne Carson has a fantastic essay on Bardot in the movie, the way Godard manipulates her icon status to evoke the mysterious and unknowable feminine figure at the centre of the Alberto Moravia novel it’s riffing on. I wish I could remember what collection it’s in.

[colinr0380]

... And God Created Woman of course as well, which Contempt is alluding back to in all of the bare-bottomed sunbathing Bardot nudity. Hopefully Criterion might upgrade that from its decades old DVD edition now.

Contempt is an absolutely magnificent film (maybe the best adaptation of The Odyssey to cinema with that indelible image of Bardot wrapped in a towel like a toga, sitting on the toilet (i.e. the throne) and smoking a ciggie during the couple's central argument scene), and a perfect cap to her 'sex kitten' fame, where Bardot plays the ultimate liberated woman (or Penelope figure) as seen through the eyes of Piccoli's increasingly jealous screenwriter husband, who eventually refuses to take any responsibility for his part in having pushed her away (almost pimped her out to) and into the orbit of the predatory Hollywood producer to such an extent that he has to respond as only a writer can, by overwriting her own ending of swimming off into the distance by herself, by instead killing her off in his fictional car accident ending to the film.

[Mr Sausage]

Casting Bardot as the analogue for western literature’s biggest symbol of fidelity and chastity was inspired. Because of course she shows quite a lot of both those qualities throughout the movie, yet her existence as Bardot seems to foil that.

[yoloswegmaster]

Brigitte Bardot

Contempt is the only thing I’ve seen her in, apparently, but she’s splendid in it. Anne Carson has a fantastic essay on Bardot in the movie, the way Godard manipulates her icon status to evoke the mysterious and unknowable feminine figure at the centre of the Alberto Moravia novel it’s riffing on. I wish I could remember what collection it’s in.

Could it be from Float?

[Mr Sausage]

Brigitte Bardot

Contempt is the only thing I’ve seen her in, apparently, but she’s splendid in it. Anne Carson has a fantastic essay on Bardot in the movie, the way Godard manipulates her icon status to evoke the mysterious and unknowable feminine figure at the centre of the Alberto Moravia novel it’s riffing on. I wish I could remember what collection it’s in.

Could it be from Float?

I haven’t read Float, but she could’ve included it there or written something else on the topic.

[domino harvey]

Brigitte Bardot

Contempt is the only thing I’ve seen her in

Letterboxd tells me I’ve seen her in thirty (!) films, but you probably have still seen what’s crucial apart from L’ours et la poupee, though obviously the law of averages means a few more of her films than those two were okay as well

EDIT Forgot about her cameo in Masculin feminin though can you really call that a BB film?

[Lowry_Sam]

Never understood the appeal of ...And God Created Woman or Contempt outside of 60s hetero teen males getting to see some skin. It wasn't like she was doing anything that Marilyn had done a decade earlier except for maybe pushing the censorship window open a little further. On the other hand, I was surprised by her performance in Clouzot's La vérité, probably her best performance on film which often gets overlooked.

[colinr0380]

EDIT Forgot about her cameo in Masculin feminin though can you really call that a BB film?

I had also not remembered that moment until you brought it up! Although isn't that the same scene in which a couple get in an argument, the girl runs out of the cafe to shoot the guy and all Jean-Pierre Leaud is upset about is that she left the door open so the heat was escaping? So my attention may have been overwhelmed by that! But that may be a good example of Godard's cafe obsession, where all kinds of people are co-existing within the same environment with their stories commenting on or counterpointing those of others - see also the cafe scene involving one of Roger Vadim's other wives, Jane Fonda, in Godard's Tout va bien!

Do you think if Godard had actually made Bonnie & Clyde, that Bardot may have been in the running for the lead role? Likely that would have been an idea immediately nixed by a US studio, but it would be interesting to imagine that such a thing could have happened!

[Beloved Aunt]

Likely that would have been an idea immediately nixed by a US studio

Colin, why do you think they would have nixed that idea? Just curious.

I mean, it IS a pretty good, interesting casting choice, to me anyway. Faye Dunaway, though I love her, is the weak link in Penn's film (although I think that's more because of the contrasting ways her character is conceived and portrayed/written vs. that of all the other hicks).

[Beloved Aunt]

Do you mean you think the studio just wouldn't want Bardot to play the role because of her French accent?

[colinr0380]

Pretty much. I would presume that especially for the time the studio would want a quintessential American crime story done with American actors for verisimilitude! But that would just be pure speculation on my part.

[colinr0380]

It has caused a bit of a stir this year because of Jimmy Kimmel doing it, but Channel 4 in the UK has long done a politically tinged "Alternative Christmas Message" to the Queen's (now King's) Speech with its guest speaker usually tightly under wraps until the broadcast itself, and in 1995 Bardot did it as the centrepiece of Channel 4's animal themed "Beastly Xmas" season.