When you get right down to it I’ve seen only five Brigitte Bardot films (And God Created Woman, The Night Heaven Fell, A Very Private Affair, Contempt, Viva Maria). On top of which throughout my life I’ve failed to catch what Bardot herself said was her only truly good one — Henri-George Clouzot’s La Verite (’60).
Bardot’s death at age 91 settles it — I’ll stream La Verite (aka Truth) this evening.
You could argue that Bardot’s grandest achievement was splashing into the sexually tepid waters of the straightlaced ‘50s and heating things up by way of brazen, unapologetic nudity and infinite intimations of erotic delight…starting with her break-out performance in And God Created Woman (‘56) and for a good 12 to 15 years after, Bardot inspired hundreds of millions of stiffies among men living grim lives of quiet desperation.
Sex, sex, sex, nudity, nudity, nudity, barefoot barefoot barefoot, pear-shaped ass pear-shaped ass pear-shaped ass…teasing erotica, playfully defiant manner…damp tongue, luscious lips and heavily mascara’ed eyes.
Bardot certainly went her own way, and didn’t shrink from saying what she damn well thought and felt. Passion was her guiding light. From her mid teens through her early ‘40s it was mostly dudes who lit her fire, and then, starting in the early to mid ‘70s, the welfare and protection of pets and animals became her primal cause.
The older Bardot got the less liberal or even tolerant she seemed. When she hit her 70s and 80s her racial views weren’t that far from Alain Delon’s, and in the late 20teens she made it clear she was no friend of the #MeToo movement.
Physically she was primarily known for her pouty expressions and blonde tousled hair (although she was born a brunette). Behaviorally she admitted to being a habitual infidel, time and again. She admitted not long ago to having “done” over a hundred guys in her lifetime…energetic and frisky, yes, but almost par for the course by the standards of the ’70s and ’80s.
Bardot posted this sign next to a country path that leads to her surfside St. Tropez compound:
