ET DIEU... CR?A LA FEMME (1956) (...AND GOD CREATED WOMAN) (1956) A Film Review Copyright Dragan Antulov 2000
When French film director Roger Vadim died last month, most of the obituaries dealt less with his work and more with the fact that he had been married or had romantic relationship with some of the most beautiful film actresses of his time. Vadim's romantic relationships were intertwined with his professional life, though, and many of those actresses had their careers launched or boosted by appearing in his movies. The best known example is Brigitte Bardot, probably the most famous French movie icon of this century, married for Vadim in the early 1950s. She reached world-wide fame by starring in her husband's 1956 melodrama ...AND GOD CREATED WOMAN, film that pushed the limits of screen erotica in its time.
Brigitte Bardot plays the heroine of the film, Juliette, 18-year old orphan who lives with her foster parents in small French Riviera town of St. Tropez. Juliette is sexually attractive woman, object of desire among entire male population of the town, and being quite aware of it, she takes the kick out of teasing men by dressing and acting provocatively. Nobody is immune to her charms, including wealthy businessman Carradine (played by Curd Juergens), but Juliette is going out with Antoine Tardieu (played by Christian Marquand), eldest son in the family of impoverished local shipbuilders. Antoine and everyone else is going to lose her, though, because her foster parents had enough of scandals and want to send her back to orphanage. When Carradine suggests that she could be saved from such fate by marrying one of the local boys, Antoine's shy younger brother Michel (played by Jean-Louis Trintignant) suddenly volunteers for the job. Because of the bride's slut reputation, everyone in town is ridiculing the marriage, but newlyweds suddenly realise that they love each other. Their idyll ends when Antoine gets back in the town, since Juliette can't resist opportunity to cheat on her husband.
The script by Vadim and Roger Levy is simple, hardly original and more in the class of television soap operas than great cinema classics. Observation of social relationships in small town (the way that people's action are led more by their wallets than by their feelings) are only hinted and not explored enough. Characters are hardly memorable, although they are played by more than capable actors (especially in the case of Curd Juergens and young Jean-Louis Trintignant). Vadim is, however, never impressed with the lack of content in his picture, and he compensates it with packing into visually attractive film. Colours are bright, locations quite charming and the new Cinemascope technique used with great skill. But the biggest attraction of the film is, of course, Brigitte Bardot. She not just looks stunnigly beautiful, she uses all her acting talent to simply ooze raw sexuality from the screen, creating character that seems to be the living embodiment of male sexist ideals - woman who is virgin and slut in the same time. Vadim enhances his wife's seductive abilities by using Cinemascope to show her body in a ways it was never shown in mainstream cinema before. Her first appearance in the film - when she sunbathes in the nude - might seem quite tame, almost kindergarten material for our standards, but it must have been quite shocking for 1950s audience. However, despite being almost half a century old, this cheap melodrama still posseses certain charm that would endure same as the legend of Bardot.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
Review written on March 21st 2000
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax Fido: 2:381/100 E-mail: dragan.antulov@st.tel.hr E-mail: drax@purger.com E-mail: dragan.antulov@altbbs.fido.hr
Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in Croatian http://film.purger.com
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