“I have been considered one of the biggest stars in the world, and yet I am nothing. This lucidity has always lived within me.“These words from Brigitte Bardot can be read from the first pages of her book-testament Tears of Combat, published in 2018.
And yet, fifty years after deserting the film sets (it was in 1973), BB remains a myth immortalized in the cinema in the 1950s and 1970s, with smoky eyes, pouting pout and polar blond hair. Of the 45 films she made, two were enough to establish her as an international sex symbol. And even more, they made her the embodiment of the femme fatale, sexually free and non-conformist.
Criticized… and adored
In And God… created woman by Roger Vadim, in 1956, his unbridled, wild and sensual dance is a cult scene in French cinema. Simone de Beauvoir affirmed, upon the release of the film, that she “walks lasciviously and that a saint would sell his soul to the devil to see her dance“. Much criticized, notably for her drawling phrasing, and adored for her natural beauty, Brigitte Bardot gained, at the age of 22, worldwide notoriety. She became one of the best-known actresses across the Atlantic. While hustling, in the 50s, the codes of femininity Multiplying scenes of nudity and lovers, BB was ahead of its time, displaying, on screen, the sexual freedom of women.
But her sensuality literally exploded in 1963 in Contempt by Jean-Luc Godard, “Bardot’s film”. With a navy blue scarf in her hair, she became, at 30, a phenomenon led by this line, also cult, between her and Michel Piccoli: “Do you see my butt in the mirror? – Yes. – Do you think my buttocks are pretty? – Yes… very. – And my breasts. Do you like them? – Yes, a lot. – What do you prefer, my breasts, or the tips of my breasts? – I don’t know, it’s the same.”
From then on, Brigitte Bardot became the muse of the greatest creators of the time. After the hit La Madrague in 1963 which celebrated her house and her barefoot life in Saint-Tropez, she sang for Serge Gainsbourg, who would become her lover, while she was married to the photographer Gunter Sachs. It’s the era of thigh-high boots and Harley Davidson and Bonnie and Clyde at the very end of the 1960s.
Film star, fashion icon, social phenomenon, French personality known throughout the world, Brigitte Bardot becomes all of these at once. But if she strives to defend her freedom, the incendiary actress despite herself becomes the “object” of the men she has always refused to be. She also feels crushed by the popularity which she says “it’s poison“. “She stopped me from living my life“, she always wrote in her memoirs, not being able to bear the idea of being a “living myth” : “Whatever I do, whatever I say, everything is magnified, embellished, distorted and repeated to the extreme.“
The dark side of an icon
So, on June 6, 1973, at the age of 38, during the filming of The Very Good and Very Joyful Story of Colinot trousse-chemise in Périgord, Brigitte Bardot made the decision to stop her film career to devote to the defense of the animal cause. And takes refuge in his house in Saint-Tropez out of sight.
But his later life, devoted to animals, was also punctuated by controversial comments, some of which earned him five convictions for inciting racial hatred. The dark side of an icon.
Related News :