{"id":373729,"date":"2025-12-28T20:13:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T20:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/373729\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T20:13:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T20:13:10","slug":"brigitte-bardots-five-best-films-from-captivating-to-controversial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/373729\/","title":{"rendered":"Brigitte Bardot\u2019s five best films: from captivating to controversial"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is no greater illustration of the differences between Hollywood and European cinema than how they positioned their respective \u201cblonde bombshells\u201d. Marilyn Monroe<\/a> was sexy, and kittenish, and va-va voom, and made guileless patsies drool with desire. Brigitte Bardot, conversely, was dangerous and primal, and her characters drove young French bucks into murderous frenzies. And when that proved futile, her screen protagonists invariably died, or killed themselves, or sold their souls by settling for rich but cruel older men.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the difference between Monroe\u2019s cute comedy Bus Stop and Bardot\u2019s discomfiting And God Created Woman, both made in the same year. To generations of casual movie watchers, Bardot was \u2014 and, to some, still remains \u2014 \u201cthe French Marilyn Monroe.\u201d They couldn\u2019t be more wrong.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Brigitte Bardot obituary<\/a><\/p>\n

5. And God Created Woman (1956)<\/p>\n

Bardot\u2019s breakout sex comedy peaks with a trance-like mambo routine, late into a movie about how her 18-year-old Saint-Tropez siren, Juliette, is being pulled in three directions by three wildly different yet equally besotted men. Here in a midday bar, and after several double brandies, Juliette launches into a hip-swaying, skirt-splitting, number that was once labelled as \u201craunchy\u201d and \u201ccontroversial\u201d but is really about the character\u2019s refusal to obey the weak-willed menfolk around her. The scene ends with wobbly-lipped husband Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant) half-crying for her to stop, with, \u201cJuliette, please!\u201d Of course, she doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

4. Shalako (1968)\"Sean<\/p>\n

With Sean Connery in Shalako<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

One of only a handful of Bardot\u2019s English-language movies (see also the Dirk Bogarde comedy Doctor at Sea), this lavish Western stars a suitably laconic Sean Connery, then in-between Bonds, as a former US cavalry officer, but is mostly notable for Bardot\u2019s turn as a gun-toting countess. She plays Irina Lazaar, and is introduced wearing all black \u2014 including fetching top hat \u2014 and besting her rivals in a New Mexico (actual location: Spain) shooting contest. A slack-jawed ambassador comments wryly that she is, \u201ccharming, beautiful, and hits whatever she aims at. Whoever he is.\u201d Later, when wracked with guilt after killing an Apache warrior, she is consoled that he was \u201cjust a Red Indian\u201d. Horrified, she fires back, \u201cHe was a man!\u201d<\/p>\n

3. La V\u00e9rit\u00e9 (1960)<\/p>\n

Bardot is at her bravest, her most emotionally exposed, brittle and beaten down as Dominique Marceau, the accused in a murder trial that\u2019s really an excuse to flash back through a life of abuse, suicide attempts and near-Dickensian misery. The film, directed and co-written by Henri-Georges Clouzot, was nominated for a best foreign language film Oscar and it\u2019s entirely built around Bardot\u2019s complex and increasingly frazzled turn while Dominique drifts in and out of relationships, becomes homeless, turns to prostitution and finally, in a scene that still shocks today, shoots dead her abusive boyfriend Gilbert (Sami Frey). Not for the faint-hearted.<\/p>\n

2. Vie priv\u00e9e (1962)<\/p>\n

Somewhere in the intersection of Being John Malkovich, Blonde, Amy and A Star is Born sits this bleak and highly prescient analysis of celebrity culture, as embodied by Bardot at her professional peak. She stars essentially as herself, here called Jill, in a fable that\u2019s co-written and directed by Louis Malle and traces Jill\u2019s progress from aspiring ballerina to Parisian starlet to global \u201csex symbol\u201d, forever hunted by a phalanx of rapacious paparazzi who eventually decimate her personal and professional life. Bardot is effortlessly naturalistic throughout, though questions inevitably abound concerning how much of Jill is an actual performance or simply a lead actress who is \u201cbeing Brigitte Bardot\u201d.<\/p>\n

1. Le M\u00e9pris (1963)<\/p>\n

This is it. The Bardot film that matters most. It straddles everything, from Hollywood to Europe, from Homer to the French New Wave. And there at the centre of it all, Bardot. No, really. It\u2019s that important. She plays Camille, the wife of a jaded screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) who is attempting to adapt The Odyssey for Hollywood legend Fritz Lang (playing himself) and his odious producer Jeremiah Prokosch (a brilliantly seedy Jack Palance). Camille, typically, is the object of everyone\u2019s desire and yet here, in a devastatingly sad film from by New Wave giant Jean-Luc Godard (Breathless), she is aware of the hopelessness of her situation, and of her crude currency among venal, thin-skinned men. It\u2019s a towering performance. The ending is suitably tragic. No follow-up needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is no greater illustration of the differences between Hollywood and European cinema than how they positioned their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":{"0":"post-373729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}