New Constellations: Movie Stars of the 1960s

Chapter 9. Brigitte Bardot: From International Star to Fashion Icon

183 ★★★★★★★★★★ ✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩ 9 Brigitte Bardot From International Star to Fashion Icon KELLEY CONWAY Beginning in the mid-1950s, Brigitte Bardot exerted an enormous impact on film, fashion, and celebrity culture, introducing a youthful, sexy image of French femininity to both domestic and international audiences . Among film historians, she is primarily remembered today for two films, Et Dieu . . . créa la femme [And God Created Woman] (1956), in which her persona of the insolent “sex kitten” first emerged, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris [Contempt] (1963), which offers, among other things, a complex and self-conscious treatment of Bardot’s appearance and star persona. In between and beyond these two highlights of her career, Bardot appeared in a wide range of mainstream French comedies and melodramas, many of which are unjustifiably neglected by film historians. In melodramas such as Courtesy Photofest. En cas de malheur [Love Is My Profession] (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958) and La Vérité [The Truth] (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1960) and in comedies such as Cettes acrée gamine [Naughty Girl] (Michel Boisrond, 1956), Bardot shows surprising range and appeal. But her importance extends far beyond the actual films in which she appeared—indeed, while films launched her career, she quickly became what would now be called a “multi-platform” celebrity. She is thus a compelling figure of transition in several contexts: she served as a bridge both from one model of femininity to another and as a link from popular to art house culture, and from cinema stardom to fashion icon and public celebrity. Bardot had one foot in 1950s femininity and the other in the sexual revolution: she was the blond, big-busted pin-up girl who ostensibly existed for the pleasure of the male viewer, but she was also the barefoot, sullen “teenager” dressed in blue jeans who connoted adolescent rebellion and attracted female imitators worldwide (Vincendeau Stars). Bardot was both a creature of mass-media stardom who gained initial visibility on the covers of French fashion magazines and from the paparazzi photographs taken on the beaches of Cannes, and an object of fascination for intellectuals such as Simone de Beauvoir, Françoise Sagan, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Edgar Morin (Schwartz). She appeared primarily in mainstream commercial films, but she is also considered a generative factor in the rise of the French New Wave, inspiring a new, looser acting style and symbolizing rebellion against an older generation (de Baecque). Although Bardot’s importance in the French context has already been well documented , less is known about her international trajectory, specifically her reception in the United States. A paradox lies at the heart of Bardot’s American stardom: she became a hugely important film star in America without ever actually making a film there. She is a French star who influenced profoundly the ways in which Hollywood did business, yet she expended very little energy on public relations there. Long before Bardot became a media sensation in the United States, French actors Maurice Chevalier and Charles Boyer, among others, built enduring careers in Hollywood (Danan; Phillips). And, of course, foreign actresses such as Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Ingrid Bergman were (and remain) powerful symbols of the Hollywood cinema as a whole. But these performers differ from Bardot in that they actually moved to the United States, built and nurtured their public personas, and appeared in English-language films. Bardot did not even visit America until 1965, when she promoted Viva Maria. She passed through again in 1966, but only to get married quickly and quietly in Las Vegas to a German “playboy.” So, what is the nature of this unlikely “international” stardom? How did it emerge 184 KELLEY CONWAY and evolve? How did Bardot acquire such extraordinary visibility in the United States and around the world without taking part in Hollywood’s star system? Bardot’s impact on American film culture has already begun to be explored. The success of Bardot’s breakthrough film And God Created Woman prompted both independent distributors and studios to fund foreign art films by directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman, and Tony Richardson (Balio). Bardot’s success also helped spark an expansion in the promotion of popular French film in the United States, resulting in a significant recasting of the relationship between Hollywood and French cinema as one of cooperation rather than competition alone (Schwartz). That Bardot...