…And God Created Woman (1956)

…And God Created Woman, released in 1956, was not Brigitte Bardot’s first film but it was the one that made her an international star, and a mega-star in France. It was Roger Vadim’s first film as a director.

Bardot and Vadim were married at the time. They divorced in 1957 but went on to make many more movies together, becoming one of the great director-star partnerships.

…And God Created Woman was a worldwide smash hit but like all of Vadim’s movies it has never been a favourite with critics. Vadim is perhaps the most consistently underrated of all French directors.

Juliette (Bardot) lives in a small seaside village. She was adopted from an orphanage by an ageing couple but now the wife wants to send her back. Juliette has been causing a scandal. In fact it’s not clear that her wickedness is much more than high-spiritedness but that is enough to have her branded as a hussy.

Wealthy middle-aged businessman Eric Carradine (Curd Jürgens) has become obsessed by Juliette. When we see her sunbathing naked in the opening scene we can understand why he’s obsessed.

Juliette is in love with Antoine (Christian Marquand), one of the three Tardieu brothers who own a failing boatyard. Her feelings for him start to cool one evening when she overhears him boasting to his friends that he is going to sleep with her before the night is out.

Another of the brothers, Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant), is hopelessly infatuated with Juliette.

There are complications. Eric wants to buy the Tardieu boatyard in order to build a casino.

And Eric decides that the only way to save from Juliette from the orphanage is for her to marry. He would marry her, but he doesn’t want officialdom enquiring into his past. His idea is that Michel will front for him. Michel’s marriage with Juliette will be a façade. Carradine intends that Juliette will be sharing his bed, not Michel’s. That’s Eric’s plan anyway. It was one of those plans that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Of course it gets complicated. It’s significant that most of the trouble arises from people misunderstanding Juliette. They assume she’s a slut and they expect her to act like a slut, but she isn’t a slut. She’s a woman and her emotions are in turmoil and she finds herself with three men in love with her but she did not create that situation deliberately.

The characters we expect to turn out to be wicked are in fact not wicked at all. They’re in love, and love cannot be controlled.

This is not a film noir, it’s a romantic melodrama, and Juliette is not a femme fatale. She is dangerous to men not because she’s scheming or evil but simply because she’s gorgeous.

It’s obvious that the hostility towards Juliette in the village comes from middle-aged women jealous of her youth and beauty. The mother of the Tardieu brothers is the most villainous character in the movie.

Bardot of course is breathtakingly beautiful and her star power is overwhelming. She’s in sex kitten mode here but Bardot had the knack of playing likeable adorable sex kittens who were usually sympathetic characters. She gives a subtle finely judged performance here. The reason Vadim kept casting her in his movies after their divorce is that he recognised that she was a terrific actress.

This was also the movie that established Jean-Louis Trintignant as a star and he’s very good. Curd Jürgens was always good. But this is Bardot’s movie.

…And God Created Woman is in many ways a precursor to the Nouvelle Vague, the difference being that Vadim actually knew how to make movies.

Most of the online reviews start from the assumption that Vadim was a bad director because everybody says so and Bardot was a talentless bimbo who just happened to be cute. Vadim is an example of the unfortunate fact that once the critics get together to trash a director’s reputation online reviewers will just keep parroting the same nonsense. They consistently misunderstand this particular movie. The whole point of this movie is that Juliette is most definitely not a schemer, and Vadim clearly intends the audience to be completely on her side.

This is a great star vehicle for Bardot and it’s stylish and it’s a great grown-up love story. Highly recommended.

I’m a huge Vadim fan and I’ve reviewed a bunch of his movies including The Night Heaven Fell (1958) and Love on a Pillow (1962), both with Bardot, plus La Ronde (Circle of Love, 1964), Les liaisons dangereuses 1960 (1959) and Blood and Roses (1960). They’re all excellent.