Brigitte Bardot, the French star you ‘had to see to believe’

Brigitte Bardot, the doe-eyed beauty whose sensuality brought French cinema to the mainstream, has died aged 91.

Arriving on screen in the 1950s, Bardot swiftly rose to fame as an era-defining “sex kitten”.

She starred in films such as And God Created Woman, Contempt and Jean-Luc Godard’s Masculin Féminin.

French actress Brigitte Bardot on the set of the film “Don Juan 73” directed by Roger Vadim in Stockholm on August 4, 1972.

TT NEWS AGENCY / AFP

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With her bouffant hair and thick eyeliner, few epitomised French chic like Bardot, who became a muse for the likes of Dior, Balmain and Pierre Cardin.

‘…but the devil shaped Bardot’

Bardot was born in 1934 Paris into the luxurious world of the 16th arrondissement.

Despite her family’s means, behind bourgeois doors, her youth was dominated by strict rules and pious parents.

Brigitte Bardot as a child, attending Mrs. Bourgat’s ballet class. Pleyel, circa 1946.

Boris Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet via AFP

A childhood dream of becoming a ballerina soon gave way to modelling, and at age 15, Bardot graced the cover of Elle.

It led her straight into the arms of French playboy Roger Vadim.

Against the protestations of her family, Bardot fell in love and soon married the director.

They would go on to collaborate on 40 films.

However, few would prove as big as 1956’s And God Created Women.

Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman (Et Dieu… créa la femme), 1956, directed by Roger Vadim.

COCINOE / Collection ChristopheL via AFP

Despite being poorly received locally due to its depiction of small-town siren Juliette, the film was a smash hit in the US and abroad.

“She is a thing of mobile contours, a phenomenon you have to see to believe,” raved The New York Times of Bardot.

“I owe everything to the Americans,” the star would later tell Vanity Fair in 2012.

Brigitte Bardot in Le repos du guerrier (Love on a Pillow), 1962, directed by Roger Vadim.

Francos Films / Incei Film / Collection ChristopheL via AFP

But as the world became besotted with Bardot, so too did the backlash.

Movie theatre owners in the US were arrested for screening the foreign film and Bardot faced similar scrutiny back home.

The debate also led to one of feminist theorist Simone de Beauvoir’s leading essays: Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome.

Brigitte Bardot in Les petroleuses (1971), directed by Christian Jaque.

FGL Productions / Collection ChristopheL via AFP

In it, she foregrounds Bardot as France’s symbol of post-war liberation — something that may now seem shocking for a star who rejected the #MeToo movement.

“She walks, she dances, she moves. In the hunting game, she is both hunter and prey,” de Beauvoir’s posits.

A very French nonchalance

If Bardot embodied her free-spirit reputation in any way, it was through love.

French actress Brigitte Bardot and soon-to-be-husband actor Jacques Charrier on the set of “Babette s’en va-t-en guerre” directed by Christian-Jaque, at the Saint-Maurice Studios on March 6, 1959.

AFP

She would cheat on Vadim with And God Created Women co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant, before marrying Jacques Charrier in 1959.

Then too came German millionaire Gunter Sachs in 1966, and former Le Pen advisor Bernard d’Ormale in 1992.

Sprinkled among them were several high-profile flings.

Brigitte Bardot during the filming of the movie “Une Parisienne” by Michel Boisrond in 1957.

Roger-Viollet / Roger-Viollet via AFP

“She loved living barefoot without a care in the world, and certainly without a care of what people might say about her,” designer Nicole Farhi told The Guardian in 2009.

She also never tried to make it in Hollywood, and rarely starred alongside American men.

Jane Birkin and Brigitte Bardot in Don Juan ou Si Don Juan etait une femme (Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman), 1973, directed by Roger Vadim.

Filmsonor / Les films Marceau / Collection ChristopheL via AFP

Bardot’s devotion to the motherland shocked even co-star Jane Birkin.

“[Brigitte] never wanted to do a film that was outside France because she didn’t want to leave her dear France,” Birkin said.

“She seemed to have no ambition whatsoever, which made her a very curiously attractive creature because she was never seeking any sort of approval.”

French actress Brigitte Bardot arrives in London on December 12, 1968.

AFP / Central Press

Perhaps then, it was not all that shocking when Bardot retired in 1973.

“I was really sick of it,” Bardot said later.

Death threats and controversy

Her style alone influenced sweaters, and saw ballerina flats named in her image.

But if you were to ask Bardot, her favourite namesake may be the Brigitte Bardot Foundation.

Picture taken in the 60s shows French actress Brigitte Bardot stroking a young female goat.

AFP

The starlett who picked up stray dogs on sets — sometimes sheltering them in hotel rooms — began earnestly throwing herself into activism after meeting Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson in the late 1970s.

Often, the only thing to draw her from her St Tropez recluse in later years were animals.

She faced death threats for telling the French to boycott horse meat; donated thousands of dollars to stop the proliferation of Bucharest’s stray dogs population; and even fought Australian politician Greg Hunt’s plan to cull two million feral cats.

French actress and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot in a dog pound in Nice (southern France), holding one of 143 puppies seized by customs officers in a Hungarian van, on December 28, 2005.

AFP / Valery Hache

It was a bullish nature that proved costly as she courted controversy with anti-LGBTQIA+, misogynistic, anti-Islamic, and anti-Semitic views.

In total, Bardot was fined a total of six times for “inciting racial hatred”, incurring a cost of more than A$86,916 (NZ$99,768).

Her near-constant court appearances became so recurrent that a prosecutor in 2008 said she had grown weary of charging Bardot.

Bardot also endorsed France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen, comparing her to a “modern Joan of Arc”.

Often asked to remark on a legacy so enamoured with her jeune fille looks, Bardot never feared aging.

Photographs displayed as part of an exhibition devoted to French star Brigitte Bardot at the MA30 Espace Landowski museum in Boulogne-Billancourt, west of Paris, on September 24, 2009.

AFP / Francois Guillot

“The other day,” she said in 2012, into her mid-70s.

“I came across … And God Created Woman on TV, which I haven’t seen in ages.

I told myself that that girl wasn’t bad. But it was like it was someone other than me.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand