Et Dieu... créa la femme (1956)

And God... created woman, but Roger Vadim... created Brigitte Bardot. Vadim was an actor/novelist/screenwriter who once saw a 15 year old Bardot in a magazine. Obsessed by her, he sought her out, they become lovers, which lead to a marriage, heavy disturbances with Bardot's family, and an attempted suicide on Bardot's part. Soon after Vadim tried to get a proper vehicle for Bardot's sexual charisma. Having failed to sell her to several producers, he decided himself to do the movie. And the movie was this, the first movie Vadim directed. And although it was not Bardot's first movie, it was the one which shot her into fame overnight and which lead her to become one of the greatest sexual icons of the 50s and 60s. The movie itself, honestly, is nothing much. It is a melodrama in sea side french St. Tropez, where a free-spirited Bardot tries to find love. But her strength, and the way she sets the screen on fire every single shot makes this movie unforgettable. Seeing it now one may find hard to believe that it was very controversial and banned in several places. The sexual innuendo is always present, but never shown, and Bardot, even for a 20 year old, is lord and master of every male character, on screen and on the audience, a true Lolita. She plays an orphan who works and lives with a family in St Tropez. She has a rich business man interested in her (Curd Jürgens, whom you might remember as a James Bond's villain in "The Spy Who Loved Me"), several other man, but her loves resides only in Antoine (Christian Marquand), although she never really shows him, choosing instead to be very free with her body and sexuality, leading off course to the jealousy of the woman in the town and gossip spreading about her. When she finds that Antoine only wants her for a one night stand, and being in peril of being sent back to the orphanage, she marries Antoine's brother (Jean-Louis Trintignant). Although she tries to love him, she cannot escape her nature, and her love for music, dance and love itself. The plain existence she tries to live with her husband is put in peril when Antoine returns to town and the always present Curd Jürgens hangs around waiting for her. The business all these men have between themselves (a subplot of land buying and casino building), are set against their lust towards Bardot, and their envies of one another. She feels trapped, not only in her existence, but also in the choice between these men, and her notion of where her love and her obligations lie. The best scene is the last, where as an expression of her true nature, Bardot dances for 5 minutes, in a completely sexual-tension filled scene, a scene that makes her immortal among the screen goddesses. Even so, the movie is slow and the plot uninteresting. The only true flame of the picture is Bardot, and I don't think that Vadim really cared for anything else. She shines, her body speaks a million languages, and she knows how to use it every step of the way. Her rise and downfall could have been brilliantly handled by a more expert director, but if the movie does not gives us that, at least it gave us Bardot, a pure Bardot on the birth of her sexuality. For that, the movie is worth it, for we always treasure where legends are born. And if that legend is Brigitte Bardot, then even more so.