Notes on B.B.
Sociocultural
It seems almost fitting that we lost both Brigitte Bardot and Ken Dryden in the same year.
Let me explain, for those of you who are not hockey fans and may think I have lost my mind: Ken Dryden was one of Canada’s great hockey players, starring in goal for the Montreal Canadians and winning multiple awards and trophies for his efforts (he is still the only player to win an MVP award before receiving the Rookie of the Year trophy). And then there is Brigitte Bardot, an actress who gave up on her career when she was still massively popular and could have played almost any role on offer from the masters of French film. Dryden passed in September; Bardot at the end of December.
So, why link these two, besides the fact of their deaths in the same year?
Dryden wrote a book called “The Game,” a book that looked at hockey, his career, the mind of athletes, and the importance of the game to Canada. His is still one of the best books ever written by an athlete on a particular sport. And I agree. My feeling is that you can learn a great deal about us from it.
But I was struck by the quote that was included as an epigraph:
“I leave before being left. I decide.”
That was quote taken from Ms. Bardot. As I mentioned, she left her career behind in her late thirties when she could have continued to be a film star. She left it behind to pursue a life dedicated to the protection of animals. And she left it behind to protest what she saw as the “Islamisation of France”.
Yes, this is going to get personal.
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I don’t want to create a mini-biography on the life of BB (her affectionate title from fans in France and beyond). There are plenty of those out there covering her highs and lows, especially the very recent lows. She had been taken to court and fined and convicted multiple times for her comments on Muslims and race-mixing (whatever that means in Europe). She was a controversial figure to women when discussing sexual harassment and their role in politics. And she believed that animals were better than most of the people she knew in her life and career (I give her some credit for that). My response has to be mixed.
I did not grow up with her movies. It was much later in life that I finally watched her on film, even though I knew her and acknowledged her presence in the media. I finally rented “Viva Maria!” mostly for Jeanne Moreau, another icon of French cinema, and for the charming idea of a film claiming to be the biography of the first women to invent the striptease by accident. There was not much there for a Louis Malle fan, apart from the attractive co-leads. And then I discovered “Le Mepris” (“Contempt”), a beautiful colour film by Jean-Luc Godard featuring Bardot, Jack Palance, Fritz Lang (!), and Godard in a small role as Lang’s assistant (interesting to see these two play off each other). She glowed in her role as the wife of a playwright attempting to complete a script for a film version of “The Odyssey”. She is the reason you want to watch this particular tale.
And then I saw her first hit.
“Et Dieu…crea la femme” (“And God Created Woman”) was not her first film. It is not a great film, either, but it is the movie that gave her to the world (the phrase “sex kitten” was created specifically for Bardot). I do believe that it did make it possible for the French New Wave movement to become a real force in cinema because theatres were demanding anything French and sexually interesting. Roger Vadim wrote the story of a young and uninhibited girl in a very narrow-minded town which could not control her (it is striking that they were married…and divorced when the film was released in the United States). Bardot was an incredible figure on film, despite whatever can be said about her talent, and it deserves a place in film history.
And I am forced to compare her to another iconic blonde of the silver screen.
Marilyn Monroe’s career coincided almost perfectly with B.B.’s, and it was an era when cinema seemed to demand the blonde as a type. But I wonder why so many filmgoers made the connection between these two. Marilyn was never able to truly be herself on screen (remember that even her name was changed from Norma Jean Mortenson; Brigitte only had to drop her middle name, Anne-Marie). Brigitte was uninhibited with herself and that camera. I may have only watched a few Bardot films, but that puts me miles ahead in my viewing habits compared to my experience of Monroe’s best years (“Some Like It Hot” was the one film of her oeuvre that I still return to again and again). It is unfair to create such links, especially with the brevity and tragedy of Monroe’s life. Bardot had to follow a different path.
So, there goes our B. B., “the locomotive of women’s history” (Simone de Beauvoir’s quote), “the French export as important as Renault cars” (Charles de Gaulle), the face of Marianne from 1969 – 1972 (the famous French icon of Liberty), Legion of Honour member (1985), author of five books, sixty songs, four marriages, and at least seventeen romances (by her count). She was not perfect, but she was in our cinematic lives, and we should remember the legend, not the faulty mess of her life that was unfortunate.
And there are quite a few movies and albums I need to search for.
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