Futures Vedettes (1955)

Futures Vedettes (AKA School for Love and Sweet Sixteen) is one of Brigitte Bardot’s early films, released in 1955. It was directed by Marc Allégret. Bardot was just starting to attract some attention at this time. A year later And God Created Woman would make her an international star and a cinematic icon.

Futures Vedettes (which means future stars) is a romantic melodrama with a few comic touches but it’s always romance that takes centre stage. It can also be seen as a coming-of-age movie. It focuses on the girls studying music and dance at the Vienna Conservatory of Music. More specifically it focuses on their relationship with their singing teacher, famed tenor Eric Walter (Jean Marais). He is a good teacher but a hard taskmaster. The girls are not only learning to be singers and dancers, they are learning to be women, which means they are learning about love. Eric is quite happy to give them lessons in this subject as well.

Pretty much all the girls are in love with him. There is a rumour that he used to beat his wife, with a belt. This excites the girls a good deal. What a man! So passionate!

Eric is separated from his wife Marie (Denise Noël). He is still obsessed with her. He just cannot forget her or get her out of his system. That does not stop him from having numerous affairs. This year the two students who have caught his eye are Sophie Dimater (Bardot) and Elis Petersen (Isabelle Pia). Both are very talented but there is quite a contrast between them. Sophie is outgoing, confident, determined and somewhat fiery. She knows she is going to be a star. She is also very aware of her feminine charms and the effect they have on men. Elis is shy and totally lacking in confidence. Both girls are hopelessly in love with Eric, both get involved with him and both sleep with him. Despite his reputation for womanising both are convinced that with them it will be different. He will fall in love with them. Perhaps, in his own selfish way, he does. But for Eric there is always Marie.

Obviously hearts are going to be broken, the question is which of the three women will be the ones to suffer. Eric is rather cold-blooded about this. If you want to be a great singer you have to learn about suffering so even if he breaks a girl’s heart at least it will make her a better artist. If he’s not quite a cad he’s pretty close to it but this makes him more sexy and more desirable. As you may have gathered by now this is not a movie that could get made today. Its political incorrectness levels are almost off the scale.

Bardot’s then-husband Roger Vadim, soon to play a very important rôle in her career, was one of the writers. Marc Allégret would direct Bardot again in 1956, in Mam'selle Striptease.

The main reason for seeing this movie today is of course Bardot. It’s not one of her greatest movies but she is impressive. The fact that she was stunningly gorgeous and wiling to take her clothes off led to her being underrated as an actress (and she’s still underrated by critics today). She was very good at light comedy (her early romantic comedies are charming) but she could handle serious dramatic rôles when given the chance to do so.

You might be wondering if Bardot takes her clothes off. The answer is yes. She has a discreet moderately revealing nude scene. It’s restrained but it’s certainly infinitely more daring than anything that would be seen in American movies at the time, or for a decade or so to come. It has to be said that it’s tasteful and playful and it actually does serve a plot function.

Isabelle Pia might have been overshadowed by Bardot but she gives a strong performance as Elis. It’s quite a demanding part since she has to make Elis timid and mousy but at the same time sympathetic and likeable.

Both Sophie and Elis are perhaps naïve but they are supposed to be young, just beginners at the game of love, so we can forgive them and sympathise with their hopes and their heartbreaks. We can’t help liking them both. They’re rivals but neither could be described as scheming or manipulative.

Yves Robert is very good as Eric’s assistant Clément who has been unfortunate enough to fall in love with Elis even though he knows he has no chance with her. Robert manages to make Clément seem not too pathetic. Mischa Auer has some fun as Eric’s manservant Berger.

Cinetrove International’s Blu-Ray release (which includes the movie on DVD as well) is superb. The black-and-white cinematography looks terrific. The only significant extra is a brief featurette on Bardot.

If you enjoy romantic melodramas then Futures Vedettes should satisfy you, and if you’re a Bardot fan you’ll definitely want this one. Highly recommended.

Une Parisienne (1957)

Une Parisienne (AKA La Parisienne) is an early Brigitte Bardot movie, released in 1957. I find Bardot’s romantic comedies of this era to be rather charming and this one is no exception. It was directed by Michel Boisrond who also helmed two of her other equally enjoyable 1950s romantic comedies, Naughty Girl and Come Dance With Me.

Bardot plays Brigitte Laurier, the daughter of the President of France. She has decided that she is madly in love with her father’s private secretary, Michel Legrand (Henri Vidal). Michel already has enough to worry about, with assorted mistresses including at least one who has tried to kill him. He is also ambitious and does not want to offend her other by playing footsies with his daughter.

Brigitte is however a very determined girl and she cooks up various schemes to capture Michel, schemes which eventually succeed. Once they are married the trouble really starts. Brigitte is sure that her new husband is still playing around with his mistresses (and certainly his mistresses are still pursuing him). So, at a reception for a European prince,  she announces that she is going to have an affair with the next man who walks through the door. The next man who walks through the door happens to be the prince. Brigitte is undaunted.

Prince Charles is played by Charles Boyer, perhaps a little old at that time to be paired with Bardot (he was 58). But then Brigitte’s pursuit of the prince is supposed to be outrageous. It is fascinating to see Boyer, one of the great French male screen heart-throbs of an earlier era, teamed up with the greatest French female sex symbol of the 50s (and possibly the greatest French female sex symbol of all time).

Bardot was twenty-three at the time, at the height of her beauty and already a seasoned actress. She had a particular gift for light comedy. She made something of a speciality of playing naughty girls. Not evil women, not dangerous women, just girls who are harmlessly and delightfully troublesome. The sort of women who won’t ruin a man’s life but they will make his life an endless series of dramas. But he won’t really mind. That’s the sort of girl she plays in this movie. Brigitte is oblivious to the normal social rules and creates mayhem but in a good-natured sort of way. She is exasperating but always adorable.

As is the case with all of her movies of this period (and most of the movies of her career) this is almost entirely a star vehicle for Bardot. She is the reason you’re going to watch this movie and she is more than capable of carrying such a film on her own. She positively sparkles. She is astonishingly sexy, but in a playful and almost wholesome way. She gives the impression of being a woman who really enjoyed everything about being a woman.

While this is very much Bardot’s movie she gets very good support from Henri Vidal and from Boyer.

This movie gets off to a bit of a slow start but once it builds up a head of steam it becomes a sheer delight. It’s a movie in which adultery is taken for granted and anyone could be sharing anyone else’s bed but it’s a kind of honest adultery. The characters have affairs but they don’t really hide them and (in contrast to real life) no-one actually gets hurt. This is the jet set lifestyle.

And Brigitte only wants to have an affair to make her husband love her. What she really wants is a proper marriage, which she doesn’t think she has.

The witty script gives Bardot and her co-stars something to work with.

This was 1957 so there’s no nudity and Bardot proves she didn’t need to get naked to be sexy.

This movie has been released on DVD but good luck finding it, especially a version with English subtitles. I caught it on cable TV. It’s a great pity because it’s one of Bardot’s best early films.

Une Parisienne is a frothy lightweight romantic sex comedy with Bardot at the top of her game, doing the sort of thing she did supremely well. What’s not to love? Highly recommended.

The Night Heaven Fell (1958)

Brigitte Bardot made some decidedly quirky movies during her career, movies that often don’t fit neatly into genre pigeonholes. The Night Heaven Fell (Les bijoutiers du clair de lune) came out in 1958 and at first it seems like it’s going to be a fairly light-hearted romance. It doesn’t take long before it takes a much darker turn.

Ursula (Bardot) is an innocent young girl fresh from convent school and eager to discover love. She’s spending some time with her aunt and uncle in Spain. The uncle, Comte Miguel de Ribera (José Nieto), is something of a lecher. In fact he has just been responsible for driving one of the village girls to drown herself in the well. This has earned him the enmity of the girl’s brother Lambert (Stephen Boyd). The comte also has a sadistic streak combined with ruthlessness and a certain degree of physical cowardice.

Ursula doesn’t think much of her uncle right from the start and she thinks even less of him when he tries to ravish her.

Ursula has stumbled into a web of romantic intrigues and she’s somewhat bewildered. The rising tensions end in murder and the murder is complicated by betrayal and Lambert finds himself on the run from the police, accompanied by Ursula.

So this is now definitely a couple on the run movie, but it’s not the kind of couple on the run movie that you would get from a Hollywood film-maker (or even a British film-maker for that matter). There’s no action. There’s a growing sense of entrapment though - we feel that Lambert and Ursula are unlikely to escape in the long run. The odds just seem to be stacked against them.

The Night Heaven Fell is a million miles away from film noir in style but when it comes to the content there is a definite film noir feel. Lambert is not a bad man and he doesn’t deserve to be hunted down like an animal. He makes some poor decisions and fate is against him and he’s not a strong enough character to resist his fate. Ursula cannot avoid her fate either - she has chosen to pursue love even if it leads her to destruction.

The film also has a certain affinity to the western genre, which may perhaps be due more to the scenery than anything else.

By the time Roger Vadim directed this film he and Bardot had already divorced although they would go on to make several further movies together.

Almost nobody has a good word to say about Roger Vadim as a director. One can’t help feeling that many critics disapprove of Vadim himself so much that there is no way they are ever going to be able to view his movies in an unprejudiced manner. And why is Vadim so disapproved of? Partly because he was essentially a non-political film-maker in an era in which critics were increasingly besotted by political film-makers. He made movies that looked gorgeous, in an era that increasingly worshipped ugliness and squalor. He made movies that took an unashamed joy in female beauty, in an era in which sex and nudity were considered by critics to be fine as long as they were treated in a suitably sleazy manner. Vadim seemed like a dinosaur, and even worse a dinosaur who believed in beauty and romance.

Vadim’s movies are certainly uneven but they’re often odd and interesting, such as the rather wonderful Please, Not Now (1961) and the intriguing psycho-sexual melodrama Love on a Pillow (1962). Both of which incidentally starred Bardot.

The Night Heaven Fell benefits from some gorgeous location work in Spain. This is quite a stunning movie. The Spanish setting not only looks great but it works.

I have a definite soft spot for Brigitte Bardot. She was at her best in romantic comedies but was willing to take on more serious roles. Her quirky performances tend to be most successful in films that are themselves slightly quirky.

Alida Valli adds the right touch of thwarted passion as the aunt. Stephen Boyd is quite good - he’s often dismissed as wooden but his detached performance conveys the essential fatalism of his character.

I personally enjoyed The Night Heaven Fell quite a bit but it’s a movie that I’m hesitant to recommend. Vadim is an acquired taste and this movie is very much one that you’re either going to love or hate, and I’d have to be honest and admit that most people will hate it. There’s a kind of existential emotional detachment to it which will annoy many viewers. It’s also a movie that can be (and has been) lambasted for its lack of realism. I’m inclined to think that the unrealistic feel is deliberate - that it’s aiming at a mythic or even a fairy tale quality. This is most assuredly not a conventional action-packed couple on the run thriller - it’s a man and a woman lost in the wilderness with a donkey and a pet piglet. There is unquestionably quite a bit of religious symbolism in this story. I think it’s an extremely interesting movie but your mileage might vary very considerably!

The Night Heaven Fell was released on DVD in Region 1 but the disc seems to be a bit hard to find these days. I can’t comment on the disc quality since I caught this movie on television (luckily in a rather nice letterboxed print).

Love on a Pillow (1962)

Brigitte Bardot’s popularity in France was based mainly on the sexy romantic comedies she did in the late 50s and early 60s. By the 60s Bardot was taking on much more varied and more challenging roles in movies like Love on a Pillow, directed by her ex-husband Roger Vadim.

The English title is very unfortunate, giving the impression (undoubtedly intentional from a commercial point of view) that this is going to be a frothy romantic comedy. The original French title Le repos du guerrier would be more accurately translated as Repose of the Warrior and this gives the clue that this is in fact a psycho-sexual melodrama.

Bardot is Geneviève Le Theil, a young woman who has just inherited a vast fortune from her aunt. She’s also engaged to be married to a very pleasant and very decent young man and life for Geneviève seems to be a rather untroubled progress towards personal and marital happiness.

Then fate steps in, as it is wont to do (especially in the movies). On a trip necessitated by the probate of her aunt’s will she walk into the wrong hotel room. On the bed is a man, asleep. Only she quickly realises he isn’t asleep. He’s unconscious and barely alive. He has taken an overdose. She has foiled his suicide attempt and saved his life. Afterwards he jokes that his soul now belongs to her. But he seems to take it seriously, and she finds it impossible to get rid of him.

His name is Renaud Sarti. At first he seems charming in a quirky sort of way, and he is quite good-looking. He’s obviously keen to sleep with her and she’s not entirely verse to the idea and pretty soon they’re lovers. Their relationship is fun at first. She doesn’t even worry too much about his drinking or his irresponsibility. She is falling in love with him. He hangs around with an arty bohemian crowd and has vague pretensions to being creative although he’s never actually achieved anything or even attempted anything in any artistic field. In these circles wanting to be creative is just as good as the real thing. Actually doing anything would be hopelessly bourgeois.

Geneviève is basically a level-headed old-fashioned girl and she’s a little suspicious of these arty friends of his, although she is quite fond of the sculptor Katov (James Robertson Justice in a somewhat typical role for him). Katov is sympathetic. Although he likes Renaud he knows he’s really a spoilt child and will almost certainly make Geneviève unhappy.

Renaud’s behaviour becomes more and more obnoxious and unpredictable. He’s no longer fun. Now he’s gone all existential on her. He’s tortured by the loss of freedom that a permanent relationship entails. He feels trapped and angst-ridden, poor boy. To Renaud this is the stuff of tragedy although to anyone else it’s simply adolescent self-indulgence.

Things come to a head when he ostentatiously picks up a prostitute in front of Geneviève. This is the final straw, and she drives off and leaves him. Driving off was easy enough, but forgetting him is much more difficult. She’s in love, and for her that’s a serious matter. Also she’s not inclined to give up on things, not even on loser boyfriends. But will Renaud give up his precious freedom for love?

The movie is obviously trying to deal seriously with the social changes occurring throughout the western world in the late 50s and 60s. Freedom opposed to responsibility, free love opposed to marriage, etc. It’s unfortunate that Renaud is such an unsympathetic character but it’s not really a fatal weakness. It makes it easier for us to see things from Geneviève’s point of view, and it prevents the movie from taking a simplistic “freedom is always good and marriage is always oppressive” position.

The movie’s greatest strength is Bardot’s performance. She gives her character a nice mix of innocence and passion and makes her slightly old-fashioned view of love and marriage seem perfectly reasonable. While Renaud likes to view her as a typical woman who wants to take a man’s freedom away from him Bardot makes sure we never fall into the trap of accepting his jaundiced view. Geneviève becomes a sadder but wiser person but she is never going to allow life to get on top of her.

Writer-director Vadim has been widely regarded as a lightweight purveyor of mildly titillating fluff but this is a rather unfair judgment on a quite interesting if uneven film-maker. The Region 4 DVD is lacking in the extras department but looks terrific. A slightly offbeat movie that is definitely worth getting hold of. If you’re not already a Bardot fan this will give you a taste of the versatility of this underrated actress. Highly recommended.

The Bear and the Doll (1969)

The Bear and the Doll (L'ours et la poupée) is a 1969 Brigitte Bardot romantic comedy. Like many of Bardot’s movies what it really has going for it is Bardot, but that’s enough.

Bardot is, well I’m not sure what she is really. It’s 1969, so she’s one of the Beautiful People. Maybe she’s a model. What Felicia (her character) mostly does is wear gorgeous clothes, go to parties, and divorce husbands. Then one day, while driving the Rolls-Royce belonging to one of her x-husbands, she has a minor traffic accident. Surprisingly, the Roller comes off much wore than the other car, a little Citroen 2CV. The Citroen is driven by Gaspard, a ’cello player. Unfortunately Felicia forgets to obtain Gaspard’s signature on the accident report for the insurance, so now she has to find him.

Tracking him down isn’t too difficult, but there’s something about Gaspard that bothers her. He doesn’t want to sleep with her. All men want to sleep with her, so she takes this as a bit of a personal affront. And a challenge. She manages to manoeuvre him into driving her back to his place. Gaspard lives in a farmhouse in the country (and Felicia had never imagined that the countryside actually existed in reality) with his numerous offspring. But without his wife, who has left him. So he’s basically single, and yet he still doesn’t want to sleep with Felicia! Felicia decides more drastic measures are called for.

That’s pretty much it for the plot - Felicia’s inventive and imaginative ploys to get Gaspard to go to to bed with her.

It’s very very lightweight, and you need to have a fairly high tolerance for the whole Swinging 60s thing (which luckily I do have). This is a very 60s film.

Jean-Pierre Cassel is reasonably amusing as Gaspard. But the movie belongs to Bardot. It’s fairly typical of the Bardot movies I’ve seen in that the character she is playing is a wildly eccentric blonde. You could even describe her as a completely and utterly insane blonde. But she’s definitely not a dumb blonde. And Bardot can take a character who could easily become annoying and make her charming and likeable.

And fortunately, since this is after all a romantic comedy, Bardot is (as always) very funny.

It’s a movie that will most likely only appeal to Bardot fans, but if you fall into that category it’s a good deal of fun.

I’m told that there’s an American DVD release from Koch Vision that is very very poor indeed, with major image quality issues and a very bad English dub. In fact it’s apparently fullscreen and in black-and-white. I saw the movie on cable on World Movies and it looked superb and was presented in French with sub-titles courtesy of SBS Australia, and in very impressive colour and in its correct aspect ratio. So don’t judge this movie by reviews of the American DVD release.

Naughty Girl (1956)

Naughty Girl (Cette sacrée gamine) was one of half-a-dozen films Brigitte Bardot made in 1956. It was one of these movies, And God Created Woman, that made her an international star, but in some ways Naughty Girl is more fun. It's a breezy romantic comedy, a kind of French screwball comedy in fact. A night-club owner is falsely accused of involvement in a forgery racket operating in his club. He flees, but his main concern is that his teenage daughter Brigitte (played by Brigitte Bardot) may be interviewed by the police. The resulting scandal would see expelled from her exclusive school. His friend Jean Clary, a young and handsome singer, is dispatched to rescue Brigitte. He carries her off in the middle of a dance class, just before the police arrive. With the police hot on their tail they can’t make it to the border so he decides to hide her in his apartment. Much to the dismay of his manservant Jérôme. His fiancée (a psychoanalyst) is even less impressed, and inclined to doubt his story that this is actually his kid sister. Brigitte is convinced her father is a government secret agent and that she is really hiding out from dangerous spies. Brigitte soon creates havoc in Jean’s life, managing to set fire to his apartment within the first 24 hours. His love life is even more severely affected. He is exasperated, especially when he has to bale her out from the police station after she is arrested following a poker game with Jérôme and his friends (in which Brigitte ended up winning a good deal of money). She insists on bringing him a foul-mouthed runaway parrot that was also in police custody. Despite his exasperation Jean is of course falling in love with Brigitte. But will true love triumph before either the police or the real criminals track them down? As is the case with many Bardot films, this one’s greatest asset is Bardot herself. She’s energetic, bubbly, funny and totally insane in an exceptionally charming way. Even relatively early in her career her comic skills are finely honed. Jean Bretonnière as Jean is a slightly colourless leading man, but Raymond Bussières as Jérôme makes up for this. He and Bardot bounce off each other wonderfully well as the ageing, crusty and slightly pompous Jérôme is gradually won over by Brigitte and eventually is more than willing to help her snare her man. Mischa Auer contributes an amusing little cameo as an eccentric dancing instructor. There are several dream sequences, as Jean dozes off during one of his fiancée’s lectures on psychoanalysis. This offers the opportunity for Bardot to do some lively dance numbers, and to wear even skimpier clothing. This is purely light entertainment, but done with flair and with class. Roger Vadim, who was by this time married to Bardot, wrote the screenplay. It’s romantic mildly sexy fun and Bardot is dazzling. It’s almost impossible to dislike this movie, and if (like me) you happen to like Bardot then you’re pretty much guaranteed to like it. The Region 4 DVD is, surprisingly enough, quite good. The movie is presented in widescreen and in French with sub-titles. The colours look bright and the picture is reasonably sharp. The complete lack of worthwhile extra is the only downside.

Come Dance With Me! (1959)

My Brigitte Bardot obsession continues to grow. It’s not an easy obsession to follow since her movies are not all that easy to find in Australia, but I do my best. My most recent find was Come Dance With Me! (Voulez-vous danser avec moi?).

Made in 1959, this is a murder mystery but done in a strictly light-hearted way, with generous helpings of comedy and romance.

Bardot is Virginie, a young woman who falls in love with a dentist named Hervé and despite the opposition of her father marries him. They have a silly little lovers’ tiff and he takes refuge in a local bar. He meets a woman there who offers to dance with him, and also offers a shoulder to cry on. He is persuaded to drive her home, and then is persuaded to come in for just one drink. One thing leads to another and pretty soon he has his head buried between her breasts. At which point her co-conspirator snaps some very incriminating photos. Our hapless dentist has been set up by a blackmailing operation.

The unlucky dentist hasn’t really done anything terribly wrong, he hasn’t technically been unfaithful, but such photos are rather difficult to explain away. He confronts the blackmailing woman, but she is insistent, and when he turns up to a second meeting at her dance studio he discovers her dead body, Which is very embarrassing indeed given that he has a very strong motive for wanting her dead.

To make things more complicated for our unfortunate dentist, Virginie has followed him to his meeting with the blackmailer and arrives to find him standing over her lifeless body. Now he has to convince her of his innocence. And having done that, he’s going to need her help in proving his innocence to the police.

Luckily Virginie takes to amateur detective work like a duck to water. And that’s one of the things I like about Bardot’s movies. She might often seem to be set up as a superficially stereotypical movie dumb blonde but her characters generally turn out not to be dumb at all. They’re often wildly eccentric, but never dumb. In this movie she’s rather ditzy but that doesn’t prevent her from being a better crime-solver than the police.

Another thing I like about Bardot’s movies is that she’s usually extremely funny but when we laugh at her it’s always in an affectionate way. We don’t laugh at her because she’s ridiculous or stupid.

Come Dance With Me! is rather racy for a 1959 movie, even for a 1959 French movie. The heroine’s quest for justice leads her to a gay bar in Paris, and we’re treated to a drag show. And there’s no hedging about the subject matter. There’s no subtext here.

Of course what really matters with this type of movie is whether it’s entertaining or not, and this one is very entertaining. It’s a well-crafted murder mystery and it’s a fun romantic farce as well. And Bardot is delightful, as always.

Please, Not Now! (1961)

Please, Not Now! (La Bride sur le cou) is a lightweight but a amusing French comedy. It was undoubtedly considered a little on the risque side in 1961 although it seems rather quaintly tame today. It succeeds mostly because of its star, Brigitte Bardot. She’s likeable, zany without being annoying, and utterly charming. She’s also a more than competent comic actress.

Bardot is a model named Sophie who has been dating her photographer boyfriend Philippe for 18 months. She spends a lot of time looking for apartments where they can settle down in domestic bliss. Philippe however is a handsome gold-digger and he has set his sights on a wealthy American woman, Barbara. When her grandmother found herself in this situation with a man who was cheating on her, she dealt with in in traditional Corsican fashion. She took a rifle and she shot the other woman. At her trial she was naturally acquitted (this is France and this was a crime of passion) and as a result she got her man back and lived happily ever after. Sophie believes in the importance of family traditions, and armed with a rifle she sets off in search of Barbara.

In the meantime she has encountered two sex-starved young doctors, and one of them has fallen for her in a big way. He convinces her that the best way to have her revenge is not through murder but by making Philippe jealous by sleeping with another man. As a gentleman Alain is happy to volunteer his services. What follows is a good-natured bedroom farce.

It works mostly because of Bardot. She has a sparkling personality and she’s genuinely funny. She elevates what could have been a fairly routine romantic comedy into something with real zip. Roger Vadim took over the director’s chair from Jean Aurel during the course of the production and he handles the task with flair and a nice lightness of touch. The movie is part romance, part screwball comedy and part sex comedy, with just the slightest dash of slapstick. The French have a tendency to be over-fond of slapstick but fortunately Vadim keeps this to a minimum. At not much over 80 minutes the movie maintains a frenetic pace. The performances in general are good, but Bardot has the star quality.

Bardot’s nude dance sequence earned the movie some notoriety at the time. It wouldn’t attract too much attention today except for the fact that this is Bardot, an actress with a degree of exuberant sex appeal that most modern actresses can only dream of.

It’s a thoroughly engaging and enjoyable little movie, and a chance to see why Bardot became a legend.

And God Created Woman (1956)

And God Created Woman (Et Dieu... créa la femme) wasn’t Brigitte Bardot’s first movie, but it was the movie that made her an overnight sensation. Released in the US in 1956 without a Production Code seal, it was a major art-house hit, due mostly to a very brief nude scene that as considered amazingly hot stuff back then. It was the nude scene that generated controversy at the time, but in fact it’s quite a nasty little film, although for reasons that have nothing to do with the nudity.

In St Tropez rich businessman Eric Carradine (played by the wonderful Curd Jürgens) plans to open a casino. To do so he needs to gain possession of a run-down boatyard owned by the three Tardieu brothers. They won’t sell, and it later transpires that they refuse to sell because as long as they own a business, even a failing business, they can convince themselves they’re middle-class rather than the poor white trash they really are. The situation is complicated by the presence of Juliette (Bardot). Both Carradine and the eldest of the Tardieu brothers are desperately anxious to get Juliette into bed.

Juliette has other problems. The family she has been living with don’t approve of her, and are threatening to send her back to the orphanage she came from (a prospect she regards as being slightly worse than being sent to prison). She wears tight sweaters, flirts with men and listens to music on the juke box, which of course is enough to convince the respectable townspeope that she’s a whore. In a particularly creepy scene she’s told that she can avoid being sent back to the orphanage if she can get a certificate from a doctor proving that she’s still a virgin. She quite reasonably tells the woman from the Welfare Board what she can do with that suggestion.

Antoine Tardieu is a dumb, violent, misogynistic creep who treats Juliette like a whore, so naturally she fall falls in love with him. It’s that sort of movie. To avoid the orphanage she needs to get married, but Antoine considers that women of Juliette’s sort are not the sort of woman one marries. His brother Michel though is willing to marry her. Michel is nerdy, sensitive and kind, so naturally she despises him. It’s that sort of movie. They are married, but Antoine seduces Juliette. Which of course is Juliette’s fault, and proves she really is a whore. There’s no hint of disapproval of Antoine’s behaviour, in fact his mother seems to think he’s done Michel a favour by showing him that his wife is a tramp. Michel finally wins Juliette’s love by slapping her around a bit thus proving that he’s a real man.

Director Roger Vadim’s sexual politics seem, more than anything else, muddled. At one point we are told that girls like Juliette were made to destroy men, and it seems that Vadim can’t quite decide if that’s Juliette’s fault or not. She’s presented as a reasonably sympathetic character, but this was 1956, and female sexuality as a destructive force was still a view that found favour with audiences. And when at one point Juliette is informed that what she needs is for her husband to give her a good spanking the complete lack of irony with which this message is delivered is rather depressing.

I’ve actually liked some of Vadim’s later films, so I’m reluctant to write him off as a mere sexist creep. The movie does have some compensations. Curd Jürgens is very good, as always. And there’s a very good scene with Bardot in a nightclub, dancing to crazy jazz rhythms. If you want to know why was was one of cinema’s iconic sex goddesses this scene tells you everything you need to know. Bardot is actually quite good. Within the limitations of the script she does her best to portray Juliette as a free spirit rather than a manipulative monster. And the movie does offer an intriguing, if rather disheartening, look at 1950s sexual mores.