The native Parisian comes from a well-to-do family of a factory owner and the daughter of an insurance company director, and received a strict conservative Catholic upbringing. Bardot practically grew up like a princess, in a palace with seven bedrooms. However, according to her own words, she had an aversion to this environment from early childhood. And above all, the attitude of her parents, who wanted to raise her and her sister to be perfect ladies, as they should and should be, and were not afraid to use any strict, often physical, educational methods.
During the Second World War, the girl spent a lot of time at home, and her mother noticed her daughter’s talent for movement while watching the children fool around with the gramophone. So she dreamed of a career as a ballerina. Already at the age of seven, little Brigitte found herself at a prestigious dance school, where she attended three times a week. Thanks to her talent (and the status of her parents), she found herself at the Paris Conservatoire on the threshold of adulthood.
Contempt | Rome Paris Films Although she grew up in the best Christian private schools, she did not escape the hungry gaze and at fifteen she had her first modeling offer, appearing on the front page of Elle magazine and promptly being invited to a film audition. Unsurprisingly, her parents were not enthusiastic about the prospect of their little princess entering the dirty world of show business, but Brigitte found support in her grandfather, who interceded for her and allowed her to audition. She failed in it, but she met the young screenwriter Roger Vadim, which led to the first romance of her life. The parents’ reaction… was not kind. One day her father surprised her with a train ticket to England, where she was supposed to go to boarding school in the morning. In a fit of rage, the girl stuck her head into a hot oven, saying that if her parents prevented her from having a relationship, she would kill herself. The threat worked, i.e. under the condition that she would have a good time immediately at eighteen. And although the marriage, which actually took place, ultimately did not survive the 1950s, Brigitte managed to become a successful film actress during it, focusing on French and Italian productions. She made her first appearances in 1952. Her presence at film festivals immediately attracted attention, where not a single photographer let her pass unnoticed. She played the main role for the first time in the Italian film Tradita from 1954. In 1955, she had great success in her first English-speaking role in the romantic comedy Doctor on the Sea. And in 1956, for a role in the historical drama My Son Nero, she dyed her hair blonde for the first time. She liked the result so much that she kept this look. The turning point in her career was the year 1956, when she starred in four highly successful films and became an international superstar. He likes me, he doesn’t like me, The Bride is Too Beautiful, Damned Girl and above all …and God Made a Woman, with whom her husband, who is primarily a screenwriter, made his debut as a director. The story of a misguided teenager who spoils an otherwise orderly community has spread throughout the world. In the United States, at the time of its premiere, it was the most successful foreign-language film of all time, grossing $4 million (equivalent to $47 million today).
Brigitte Bardot a Jane Birkin | Sunset Boulevard / Corbis via Getty Images
Bardot became an absolute star, the embodiment of the wider social shifts of the ongoing sexual revolution. Her nickname “Sex Kitten” soon caught on as a term denoting the trend of female characters (whether emulated in fiction or reality) being completely open to and enjoying sex. All this was accompanied by sensual photos of her court photographer Sam Lévin, which flooded the world. A girl from high society with the best upbringing became the embodiment of abandoning the old order and surrendering to hedonism. Of course, the more popular Bardot became, the more scandalous and controversial she became. There were protests against her films, and especially in the United States there was always an uproar around her.
The following decade, however, was unstoppable. As if her ubiquitous image wasn’t enough, the radio was flooded with her popular singles. We can probably consider Godard’s Contempt from 1963 as her artistic peak, which works very consciously with her image of a sex symbol. It presents the male obsession with this perfect, open to everything and at the same time completely inaccessible woman, whose body can be admired to infinity, but whose soul is forever inaccessible and unreadable. feel confident about maintaining their persona. She released her last two films in 1973, at the age of thirty-nine. Of them, the drama Don Juan 73 was filmed by her first love and at that time already “fifteen-year-old” ex-husband Roger Vadim, whom she left because of her romances, but they continued to maintain friendly relations and worked together repeatedly. Subsequently, Bardot left the screen, although she never completely disappeared from the pop culture horizon.
Unfortunately, Brigitte is a person accompanied by proverbial demons all her life, which is a rather euphemistic expression when looking at her actions and words. Her own son cut her out of his life completely and sued her after she referred to him as a “tumor” in her memoirs. She never met her two grandchildren. She is a racist and homophobe, fined six times for incitement to hatred for her comments towards virtually anyone who is not a white heterosexual Western European. Politically, her name is associated with far-right nationalist parties, her second husband, Bernard d’Ormale, was an adviser to the National Front president, Jean-Marie Le Pen. How strange that while she completely defied her conservative upbringing regarding ideas about personal freedom, she adopted attitudes towards others to the letter.
Her life decisions and situations did not always bring her happiness. Six of her suicide attempts are publicly known. She seems to have given all her life’s energy to the fight for animal rights, in which she finds her greatest meaning. Her open letter to Sophia Loren (who celebrated the same jubilee last week) became famous, for example, after one of the few comparably iconic European faces was photographed on the cover of a newspaper in animal fur. She wrote another indignant open letter some fifteen years ago to the French Minister of Culture when he decided to add bullfighting to the list of national cultural heritage. Bardot has given away quite a bit of money to activist organizations seeking the welfare of animals and fighting climate change.
Bardot remains an icon. Although unlike the aforementioned Loren (the first non-English-speaking actress to win an Oscar), she never achieved institutional recognition purely for acting, her charisma, energy and ethos in many ways defined the era of the 1950s and 1960s. Even because Bardot subsequently withdrew from audiovisuals, she remains eternally young, forever the “Sex Kitten” in the cultural consciousness. In today’s context, this may seem like objectification (because objectification it is), but in the context of the time, it was a sign of rebellion and women’s decision to become masters (ladies?) of their own destiny, using their most effective weapons. We must always evaluate similar gestures taking into account the time and environment in which they enter. Brigitte Bardot as a person of flesh and blood does not really fulfill the ideas of freedom and equality (unless you have four legs and a tail), but her persona certainly does. And forever will be.
Check out the list of the best actresses according to the Kinobox database.
Sources: Wikipedia, IMDb, Kinobox
