Full text of "Simone de Beauvoir: Brigitte

Bardot And The Lolita Syndrome"

See other formats
APDF p wi g u p ^ rr t^6% f F r 8ati»'4 p ^t^ 1 ^ fgift^i w flfm ark

star is the subject ot a study by l-rance's

leading female intellect. Mile, de Beauvoir
analyses the appeal of Bardot in connection
with the ideal of modern woman which tends
towards the Lolita child-woman symbol.

‘The distinguished French sociologist . . .

has written a fascinating treatise’ —

THE PEOPLE .

'Something most jolly and acceptable . . .

pictures of the head of Mile. Brigitte Bardot
and ... of other bits of her' —

Bernard Levin, THE SPECTATOR

BRIGITTE
BARDO

and the

LOLITA SYNDROME

SIMONE de
BEAUVOIR

A FOUR SQUARE BOOK (Si)

Published by Jhe New English Library Ltd. Vswmi/

MB nmmirr imimiT'i'iK?®

WITH MANY HALF-TONE ILLUSTRATIONS

BRIGITTE BARDOT

AND THE
LOLITA SYNDROME

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

THE NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY LTD.

First published in England by Andre Deutsch Ltd. and Weidenfeld ft Nicolson Ltd.

in 1960

Second impression November 1960

Translated by Bernard Fretchman
© 1959 by Simone de Beauvoir
English translation © 1959 by Esquire Inc.

FIRST FOUR SQUARE EDITION 1962

The photographs are reproduced by courtesy of: Barezzi, Civirani, Union Preuj
Giancolombo, Publistampa, Carlo Cisventi, Photos Match, News Blitz, FarabolaJ
Richter, Publifoto, Rapho, Franco Fedeli, Ever Foto, United Press, Aldo Palazzjj
Editore, Settimo Giomo, The Orion Press Ltd., Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Rizzo!
Editore, Le Ore, Paris-Match, L’Espresso.

Four Square Books are published by The New English Library Limited from Barnard's
Holborn, London EC 1. They are made and printed in Great Britain by Love
Malcomson Ltd, Redhill, Surrey

BRIGITTE BARDOT
AND THE LOLITA SYNDROME
by SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

On New Year’s Eve, Brigitte Bardot

appeared on French television. She was
got up as usual — blue jeans, sweater and
shock of tousled hair. Lounging on a sofa,
she plucked at a guitar. ‘That’s not hard,’
said the women. ‘I could do just as well.
She’s not even pretty. She has the face of a
housemaid.’ The men couldn’t keep from
devouring her with their eyes, but they too
snickered. Only two or three of us, among
thirty or so spectators, thought her charm-
ing. Then she did an excellent classical
dance number. ‘She can dance’, the others
admitted grudgingly. Once again I could
observe that Brigitte Bardot was disliked in
her own country.

When And God Created Woman was

shown in first-run houses on the Champs-
l lysees, the film, which had cost a hundred
and forty million francs, brought in less
than sixty. Receipts in the U.S.A. have
come to $4,000,000, the equivalent of the
.ale of 2,500 Dauphines. BB now deserves
to be considered an export product as
important as Renault automobiles.

She is the new idol of American youth.

She ranks as a great international star.

Nevertheless, hci Icllow countrymen con-
tinue to shy away from hci Not a week
goes by without articles in the press telling
all about her recent moods and love a flairs
or offering a new interpretation of her
personality, but hall ol these articles and
gossip items seethe with spile. Brigitte
receives three hundred Ian letters a day,
from boys and girls alike, and every day
indignant mothers write to newspaper edi-
tors and religious and civil authorities to
protest against hei existence. When three
young ne'er-do wells of reputable families
murdered a sleeping old man in a train at
Angers, the Parent I cachets’ Association
denounced BB to M. C'hatcnay, the deputy-
mayor of the city. It was she, they said,
who was really responsible for the crime.
And dot! ( rea led Woman had been shown
in Angers; the young people had been
immediately perverted. 1 am not surprised
that professional moralists in all countries,
even the U.S.A., have tried to have her films
banned. It is no new thing for high-minded
folk to identify the flesh with sin and to
dream of making a bonfire of works of art,
books and films that depict it complacently
or frankly.

But this official prudery does not explain

the French public’s very peculiar hostility
to BB. Martine Carol also undressed rather

6
generously in her hit films, and nobody
reproached her, whereas almost everyone is
ready to regard BB as a very monument of
immorality. Why does this character,
fabricated by Marc Allegret and particularly
by Vadim, arouse such animosity?

If we want to understand what BB

represents, it is not important to know what
the young woman named Brigitte Bardot is
really like. Her admirers and detractors
are concerned with the imaginary creature
they see on the screen through a tremendous
cloud of ballyhoo. In so far as she is
exposed to the public gaze, her legend has
been fed by her private life no less than by
her film roles. This legend conforms to a
very old myth that Vadim tried to rejuve-
nate. He invented a resolutely modern
version of ‘the eternal female’ and thereby
launched a new type of eroticism. It is
this novelty that entices some people and
shocks others.

Love can resist familiarity; eroticism

cannot. Its role in the films dwindled
considerably when social differences be-
tween the two sexes diminished. Between
1930 and 1940 it gave way to romanticism
and sentimentality. The vamp was replaced
by the girl friend, of whom Jean Arthur was
the most perfect type. However, when in
1947 the cinema was threatened with a
serious crisis, film-makers returned to eroti-

cism in an effort to win back the public’s

affection. In an age when woman drives a
car and speculates on the stock exchange,
an age in which she unceremoniously
displays her nudity on public beaches, any
attempt to revive the vamp and her mystery
was out of the question. The films tried to
appeal, in a cruder way, to the male’s
response to feminine curves. Stars were
appreciated for the obviousness of their
physical charms rather than for their pas-
sionate or languorous gaze. Marilyn
Monroe, Sophia Loren and Lollobrigida
are ample proof of the fact that the full-
blown woman has not lost her power over
men. However, the dream-merchants were
also moving in other directions. With
Audrey Hepburn, Fran^oise Arnoul, Marina
Vlady, Leslie Caron and Brigitte Bardot
they invented the erotic hoyden. For a
part in his next film. Dangerous Connections,
Vadim has engaged a fourteen-year-old girl.
The child-woman is triumphing not only
in the films. In A View from the Bridge, the
Arthur Miller play which has been a hit in
the United States and a bigger one in
England and France, the heroine has just
about reached the age of puberty. Nabo-
kov’s Lolita, which deals with the relations
between a forty-year-old male and a ‘nym-
phet’ of twelve, was at the top of the best-
seller list in England and America for

10

11

12

months. The adult woman now inhabits

the same world as the man, but the child-
woman moves in a universe which he
cannot enter. The age difference re-estab-
lishes between them the distance that seems
necessary to desire. At least that is what
those who have created a new Eve by
merging the ‘green fruit' and 'femme fatale
types have pinned their hopes on.

We shall see the reasons why they have

not succeeded in France as well as in the
United States.

Brigitte Bardot is the most perfect speci-

men of these ambiguous nymphs. Seen
from behind, her slender, muscular, dancer’s
body is almost androgynous. Femininity
triumphs in her delightful bosom. The long
voluptuous tresses of Melisande flow down
to her shoulders, but her hair-do is that of
a negligent waif. The line of her lips forms
a childish pout, and at the same time those
lips are very kissable. She goes about
barefooted, she turns up her nose at elegant
clothes, jewels, girdles, perfumes, make-up,
at all artifice. Yet her walk is lascivious
and a saint would sell his soul to the devil
merely to watch her dance. It has often
been said that her face has only one expres-
sion. It is true that the outer world is
hardly reflected in it at all and that it does
not reveal great inner disturbance. But that
air of indifference becomes her. BB has not

14

15

17

been marked by experience. Even if she

has lived — as in Love Is My Profession —
the lessons that life has given her are too
confused for her to have learned anything
from them. She is without memory, with-
out a past, and, thanks to this ignorance,
she retains the perfect innocence that is
attributed to a mythical childhood.

The legend that has been built up around

Brigitte Bardot by publicity has for a long
time identified her with this childlike and
disturbing character. Vadim presented her
as ‘a phenomenon of nature’. ‘She doesn’t
act,’ he said. ‘She exists.’ ‘That’s right,’
confirmed BB. ‘The Juliette in And God
Created Woman is exactly me. When I’m
in front of the camera, I’m simply myself.’
Brigitte was said not to bother to use a
comb, but to do up her hair with her fingers.
She was said to loathe all forms of world-
liness. Her interviews presented her as
being natural and unpretentious. Vadim
went even further. He painted her as naive
to the point of absurdity. According to
him, at the age of eighteen she thought that
mice laid eggs. She was moody and
capricious. At the gala performance of her
film. Please, Mr. Balzac, the producer
waited in vain for her to show up. At the
last minute he informed the audience that
she was not coming. She was described as
a creature of instinct, as yielding blindly to

18

her impulses. She would suddenly take a

dislike to the decoration of her room and
then and there would pull down the
hangings and start repainting the furniture.
She is temperamental, changeable and un-
predictable, and though she retains the
limpidity of childhood, she has also preser-
ved its mystery. A strange little creature,
all in all; and this image does not depart
from the traditional myth of femininity.
The roles that her script-writers have offered
her also have a conventional side. She
appears as a force of nature, dangerous so
long as she remains untamed, but it is up
to the male to domesticate her. She is kind,
she is good-hearted. In all her films she
loves animals. If she ever makes anyone
suffer, it is never deliberately. Her flighti-
ness and slips of behaviour are excusable
because she is so young and because of
circumstances. Juliette had an unhappy
childhood ; Yvette, in Love Is My Profession ,
is a victim of society. If they go astray, it
is because no one has ever shown them the
right path, but a man, a real man, can lead
them back to it. Juliette’s young husband
decides to act like a male, gives her a good
sharp slap, and Juliette is all at once
transformed into a happy, contrite and
submissive wife. Yvette joyfully accepts
her lover’s demand that she be faithful and
his imposing upon her a life of virtual

20

21
seclusion. With a bit of luck, this experien-
ced, middle-aged man would have brought
her redemption. BB is a lost, pathetic child
who needs a guide and protector. This
cliche has proved its worth. It flatters
masculine vanity; it reassures mature and
maturing women. One may regard it as
obsolete; it cannot be accused of boldness.
But the spectators do not believe in this
victory of the man and of the social order
so prudently suggested by the scenario —
and that is precisely why Vadim's film and
that of another French director, Autant-
Lara, do not lapse into triviality. We may
assume that the ‘little rascal’ will settle
down, but Juliette will certainly never
become a model wife and mother. Ignor-
ance and inexperience can be remedied,
but BB is not only unsophisticated but
dangerously sincere. The perversity of a
‘Baby Doll' can be handled by a psychia-
trist; there are ways and means of calming
the resentments of a rebellious girl and
winning her over to virtue. In The Barefoot
Contessa , Ava Gardner, despite her licen-
tiousness, does not attack established values
— she condemns her own instincts by admit-
ting that she likes ‘to walk in the mud’.
BB is neither perverse nor rebellious nor
immoral, and that is why morality does not
have a chance with her. Good and evil are
part of conventions to which she would not

22

23

even think of bowing.

Nothing casts a sharper light on the

character she plays than the wedding supper
in And God Created Woman. Juliette
immediately goes to bed with her young
husband. In the middle of the banquet, she
suddenly turns up in a bathrobe and, with-
out bothering to smile or even look at the
bewildered guests, she picks out from under
their very noses a lobster, a chicken, fruit
and bottles of wine. Disdainfully and
tranquilly she goes off with the loaded tray.
She cares not a rap for other people’s
opinion. BB does not try to scandalize.
She has no demands to make; she is no more
conscious of her rights than she is of her
duties. She follows her inclinations. She
eats when she is hungry and makes love
with the same unceremonious simplicity.
Desire and pleasure seem to her more con-
vincing than precepts and conventions. She
does not criticize others. She does as she
pleases, and that is what is disturbing. She
does not ask questions, but she brings
answers whose frankness may be contagious.
Moral lapses can be corrected, but how
could BB be cured of that dazzling virtue
— genuineness? It is her very substance.
Neither blows nor fine arguments nor love
can take it from her. She rejects not only
hypocrisy and reprimands, but also prudence
and calculation and premeditation of any

24

25

kind. For her, the future is still one of

those adult inventions in which she has no
confidence. ‘I live as if I were going to
die at any moment,’ says Juliette. And
Brigitte confides to us, ‘Every time I’m in
love, I think it’s forever’. To dwell in
eternity is another way of rejecting time. She
professes great admiration for James Dean.
We find in her, in a milder form, certain
traits that attain, in his case, a tragic inten-
sit y the fever of living, the passion for
the absolute, the sense of the imminence
of death. She, too, embodies — more mo-
destly than he, but quite clearly — the credo
that certain young people of our time are
opposing to safe values, vain hopes and
irksome constraint.

That is why a vast and traditional-minded

rear guard declares that ‘BB springs from
and expresses the immorality of an age’.
Decent or unwanted women could feel at
ease when confronted with classical Circes
who owed their power to dark secrets.
These were coquettish and calculating crea-
tures, depraved and reprobate, possessed
of an evil force. From the height of their
virtue, the fiancee, the wife, the great-
hearted mistress and the despotic mother
briskly damned these witches. But if Evil
takes on the colours of innocence, they are
in a fury. There is nothing of the ‘bad
woman’ about BB. Frankness and kindness

26

27

can be read on her face. She is more like

a Pekingese than a cat. She is neither
depraved nor venal. In Love Is My Profes-
sion she bunches up her skirt and crudely
proposes a deal to Gabin. But there is a
kind of disarming candour in her cynicism.
She is blooming and healthy, quietly sensual.
It is impossible to see in her the touch of
Satan, and for that reason she seems all the
more diabolical to women who feel humili-
ated and threatened by her beauty.

All men are drawn to BB’s seductiveness,

but that does not mean they are kindly
disposed towards her. The majority of
Frenchmen claim that woman loses her sex
appeal if she gives up her artifices. Accord-
ing to them, a woman in trousers chills
desire. Brigitte proves to them the contrary,
and they are not at all grateful to her,
because they are unwilling to give up their
role of lord and master. The vamp was no
challenge to them in this respect. The
attraction she exercised was that of a
passive thing. They rushed knowingly into
the magic trap; they went to their doom
the way one throws oneself overboard.
Freedom and full consciousness remained
their right and privilege. When Marlene
displayed her silk-sheathed thighs as she
sang with her hoarse voice and looked
about her with sultry eyes, she was staging
a ceremony, she was casting a spell. BB
28

does not cast spells; she is on the go. Her

flesh does not have the abundance that, in
others, symbolizes passivity. Her clothes
are not fetishes and when she strips she
is not unveiling a mystery. She is showing
her body, neither more nor less, and that
body rarely settles into a state of immo-
bility. She walks, she dances, she moves
about. Her eroticism is not magical, but
aggressive. In the game of love, she is as
much a hunter as she is a prey. The male
is an object to her, just as she is to him.
And that is precisely what wounds masculine
pride. In the Latin countries, where men
cling to the myth of ‘the woman as object’,
BB’s naturalness seems to them more
perverse than any possible sophistication.
To spurn jewels and cosmetics and high
heels and girdles is to refuse to transform
oneself into a remote idol. It is to assert
that one is man’s fellow and equal, to
recognize that between the woman and
him there is mutual desire and pleasure.
Brigitte is thereby akin to the heroines of
Fran?oise Sagan, although she says she
feels no affinity for them — probably because
they seem to her too thoughtful.

But the male feels uncomfortable if,

instead of a doll of flesh and blood, he holds
in his arms a conscious being who is sizing
him up. A free woman is the very contrary
of a light woman. In her role of confused

30

female, of homeless little slut, BB seems

to be available to everyone. And yet,
paradoxically, she is intimidating. She is
not defended by rich apparel or social
prestige, but there is something stubborn
in her sulky face, in her sturdy body. ‘You
realize,’ an average Frenchman once said
to me, ‘that when a man finds a woman
attractive, he wants to be able to pinch her
behind.’ A ribald gesture reduces a woman
to a thing that a man can do with as he
pleases without worrying about what goes
on in her mind and heart and body. But
BB has nothing of the ‘easygoing kid’ about
her, the quality that would allow a man to
treat her with this kind of breeziness.
There is nothing coarse about her. She has
a kind of spontaneous dignity, something
of the gravity of childhood. The difference
between Brigitte’s reception in the United
States and in France is due partly to the
fact that the American male does not have
the Frenchman's taste for broad humour.
He tends to display a certain respect for
women. The sexual equality that BB’s
behaviour affirms wordlessly has been recog-
nized in America for a long time. Never-
theless, for a number of reasons that
have been frequently analysed in America,
he feels a certain antipathy to the ‘real
woman’. He regards her as an antagonist,
a praying mantis, a tyrant. He abandons

32

himself eagerly to the charms of the

‘nymph’ in whom the formidable figure of
the wife and the ‘Mom’ is not yet apparent.
In France, many women are accomplices
of this feeling of superiority in which men
persist. Their men prefer the servility of
these adults to the haughty shamelessness
of BB.

She disturbs them all the more in that,

though discouraging their jollity, she never-
theless does not lend herself to idealistic
sublimation. Garbo was called ‘The
Divine’; Bardot, on the other hand, is of
the earth earthy. Garbo’s visage had a
kind of emptiness into which anything
could be projected— nothing can be read in-
to Bardot’s face. It is what it is. It has the
forthright presence of reality. It is a
stumbling-block to lewd fantasies and ether-
eal dreams alike. Most Frenchmen like
to indulge in mystic flights as a change from
ribaldry, and vice-versa. With BB they get
nowhere. She corners them and forces
them to be honest with themselves. They
are obliged to recognize the crudity of their
desire, the object of which is very precise
—that body, those thighs, that bottom,
those breasts. Most people are not bold
enough to limit sexuality to itself and to
recognize its power. Anyone who challen-
ges their hypocrisy is accused of being
cynical.

34

35

In a society with spiritualistic pretensions,

BB appears as something deplorably mater-
ialistic and prosaic. Love has been dis-
guised in such falsely poetic trappings that
this prose seems to me healthy and restful.
I approve Vadim’s trying to bring eroticism
down to earth. Nevertheless, there is one
thing for which I blame him, and that is
for having gone so far as to de-humanize
it. The ‘human factor’ has lost some of
its importance in many spheres. Technical
progress has relegated it to a subordinate
and at times insignificant position. The
implements that man uses — his dwelling,
his clothes, etc — tend towards functional
rationalization. He himself is regarded by
politicians, brains-trusters, publicity agents,
military men and even educators, by the
entire ‘organization world’, as an object to
be manipulated. In France, there is a
literary school that reflects this tendency.
The ‘young novel’— as it calls itself— is
bent on creating a universe as devoid as
possible from human meanings, a universe
reduced to shiftings of volumes and surfaces,
of light and shade, to the play of space
and time; the characters and their relation-
ships are left in the background or even
dropped entirely. This quest is of interest
only to a small number of initiates. It has
certainly not influenced Vadim, but he, too,
reduces the world, things and bodies to

36
37

their immediate presence. In real life, and

usually in good novels and films, individuals
are not defined only by their sexuality.
Each has a history, and his or her eroti-
cism is involved in a certain situation. It
may even be that the situation creates it.
In African Queen , neither Humphrey Bogart
nor Katharine Hepburn, who are presented
as aged and worn, arouses desire before-
hand. Yet when Bogart puts his hand on
Katharine’s shoulder for the first time, his
gesture unleashes an intense erotic emotion.
The spectators identify themselves with the
man, or the woman, and the two characters
are transfigured by the feeling that each
inspires in the other. But when the hero
and heroine are young and handsome, the
more the audience is involved in their
history, the more it feels their charm. It
must therefore take an interest in it. For
example, in Ingmar Bergman's Sommarlek ,
the idyll which is related is not set in the past
arbitrarily. As a result of this device, we
witness the revels of two particular adoles-
cents. The young woman, who has moved
us and aroused our interest, evokes her
youthful happiness. She appears before
us, at the age of sixteen, already weighed
down with her entire future. The land-
scape about her is not a mere setting, but
a medium of communication between her
and us. We see it with her eyes. Through

38

the lapping of the waters and the clearness

of the nocturnal sky, we merge with her.
All her emotions become ours, and emotion
sweeps away shame. The ‘summer trifling’
— caresses, embraces, words — that Bergman
presents is far more ‘amoral’ than Juliette’s
adventures in And God Created Woman.
The two lovers have barely emerged from
childhood. The idea of marriage or of sin
does not occur to them. They embrace
with hesitant eagerness and unchaste nai-
vete. Their daring and jubilation trium-
phantly defy what is called virtue. The
spectator does not dream of being shocked
because he experiences with them their
poignant happiness. When I saw And God
Created Woman, people laughed during
scenes. They laughed because Vadim does
not appeal to our complicity. He ‘de-situ-
ates’ sexuality, and the spectators become
voyeurs because they are unable to project
themselves on the screen. This partially
justifies their uneasiness. The ravishing
young woman whom they surprise, at the
beginning of the film, in the act of exposing
her nakedness to the sun, is no one, an
anonymous body. As the film goes on,
she does not succeed in becoming someone.
Nonchalantly combining convention and
provocation, Vadim does not deign to
lure the audience into the trap of a convin-
cing story. The characters are treated

40

42

si *

allusively; that of BB is loaded with too

many intentions for anyone to believe m
its reality. And the town of St-Tropez is
merely a setting that has no intimate
connection with the lives of the mam
characters. It has no effect on the specta-
tor. In Sommarlek, the world exists, it
reflects for the young lovers their confusion,
their anxious desire, their joy. An innocent
outing in a boat is as erotically meaningful
as the passionate night preceding it and
the one to follow. In Vadim’s film, the
world is absent. Against a background
of fake colours he flashes a number of
‘high spots’ in which all the sensuality
of the film is concentrated: a strip-tease,
passionate love-making, a mambo sequence.
This discontinuity heightens the aggressive
character of BB's femininity. The audience
is not carried away once and for all into
an imaginary universe. It witnesses with-
out much conviction, an adventure which
does not excite it and which is broken up
by ‘numbers’ in which everything is so
contrived as to keep it on tenterhooks. It
protects itself by snickering. A critic has
written that BB’s sexuality was too ‘cerebral
to move a Latin audience. This amounts
to making BB responsible for Vadim’s
style, an analytical and consequently abs-
tract’ style that, as I have said, puts the
spectator in the position of a voyeur. The

44

45

consenting voyeur who feeds on ‘blue films

and ‘peep shows’, seeks gratifications other
than the visual. The spectator who is a
voyeur in spite of himself reacts with
annoyance, for it is no fun to witness a
hot performance cold-bloodedly. When
BB dances her famous mambo, no one
believes in Juliette. It is BB who is exhibi-
ting herself. She is as alone on the screen
as the strip-tease artist is alone on the stage.
She offers herself directly to each spectator.
But the offer is deceptive, for as the spec-
tators watch her, they are fully aware that
this beautiful young woman is famous,
rich, adulated and completely inaccessible.

It is not surprising that they take her for a

slut and that they take revenge on her by
running her down.

But reproaches of this kind cannot be

levelled against Love Is My Profession, the
film in which BB has displayed the most
talent. Autant-Lara’s direction, Pierre

Bost’s and Aurench’s scenario and dialogue

and Gabin’s performance all combine to
grip the spectator. In this context, BB
gives her most convincing performance.
But her moral reputation is none the better
for it. The film has aroused furious

protests; actuaUy it attacks the social order

much more bitingly than any of her early
ones. The ‘amoralism’ of Yvette, the
heroine, is radical. She prostitutes herself

46

48

49

with indifference, organizes a hold-up and

has no hesitation about striking an old
man. She proposes to a great lawyer a deal
that threatens to dishonour him. She gives
herself to him without love. Then she falls
in love with him, deceives him and artlessly
keeps him informed of her infidelities.
She confesses to him that she has had
several abortions. However, although the
scenario indicates for a moment the possi-
bility of a conversion, she is not presented
as being unconscious of the nature of her
behaviour and capable of being won over
to Good, as defined by respectable folk.
Truth is on her side. Never does she fake
her feelings. She never compromises with
what seems to her to be obviously true.
Her genuineness is so contagious that she
wins over her lover, the old unethical law-
yer. Yvette awakens whatever sincerity
and dynamism still remain in him. The
authors of this film took over the character
created by Vadim, but they charged it with
a much more subversive meaning: purity
is not possible in our corrupt society except
for those who have rejected it or who
deliberately cut themselves off from it.

But this character is now in the process of

evolving. BB has probably been convinced
that in France nonconformity is on the way
out. Vadim is accused of having distorted
her image — which is certainly not untrue.

50

51

People who know BB speak of her amiable

disposition, her kindness and her youthful
freshness. She is neither silly nor scatter-
brained, and her naturalness is not an act.
It is nevertheless striking that recent
articles which pretend to reveal the ‘real
BB’, ‘BB seen through the keyhole’, ‘the
truth about BB', mention only her edifying
traits of character. Brigitte, we are told
again and again, is just a simple girl. She
loves animals and adores her mother. She
is devoted to her friends, she suffers from
the hostility she arouses, she repents of
her caprices, she means to mend her ways.
There are excuses for her lapses: fame and
fortune came too suddenly, they turned
her head, but she is coming to her senses.
In short, we are witnessing a veritable
rehabilitation, which in recent weeks has
gone very far. Definitive redemption, for
a star, comes with marriage and mother-
hood.

Brigitte speaks only faintly about getting

married. On the other hand, she often de-
clares enthusiastically that she adores the
country and dreams of taking up farming . 1
In France, love of cows is regarded as a
token of high morality. Gabin is sure of
winning the public’s sympathy when he
declares that ‘a cow is more substantial
than glory’. Stars are photographed as
much as possible in the act of feeding their

1 Written before Mademoiselle Bardot

52 became Madame Charrier.

chickens or digging in their gardens. This

passion for the soil is appropriate to the
reasonable bourgeoise that, as we are
assured, Brigitte is bent on becoming. She
has always known the price of things and
has always gone over her cook’s accounts.
She follows the stock market closely and
gives her broker well-informed instruc-
tions. During an official luncheon, she is
said to have dazzled the director of the
Bank of France with her knowledge. To
know how to place one’s money is a
supreme virtue in the eyes of the French
bourgeoisie. A particularly imaginative
journalist has gone so far as to inform his
readers that Brigitte has such a passion for
the absolute that she may enter upon the
paths of mysticism. Wife and mother,
farmerette, businesswoman, Carmelite nun,
BB has a choice of any of these exemplary
futures. But one thing is certain: on the
screen she is already beginning to convert.
In her next film, Babette Goes to War , 1 she
will play a heroine of the Resistance. Her
charming body will be hidden from us by
a uniform and sober attire. ‘I want every-
one under sixteen to be able to come and
see me’, she has been made to say. The
film will end with a military parade in which
Babette acclaims General de Gaulle.

Is the metamorphosis definitive? If so,

there will still be a number of people who

1 Written before this film was released.

57

will be sorry. Exactly who? A lot of young

people belong to the old guard, and there
are older ones who prefer truth to tradi-
tion. It would be simple-minded to think
that there is a conflict of two generations
regarding BB. The conflict that does exist
is between those who want mores to be
fixed once and for all and those who
demand that they evolve. To say that ‘BB
embodies the immorality of an age’ ijieans
that the character she has created challenges
certain taboos accepted by the preceding
age, particularly those which denied women
sexual autonomy. In France, there is still
a great deal of emphasis, officially, on
women’s dependence upon men. The
Americans, who are actually far from
having achieved sexual equality in all
spheres, but who grant it theoretically, have
seen nothing scandalous in the emancipation
symbolized by BB. But it is, more than
anything else, her frankness that disturbs
most of the public and that delights the
Americans, i want there to be no hypo-
crisy, no nonsense about love,’ BB once
said. The debunking of love and eroticism
is an undertaking that has wider implica-
tions than one might think. As soon as a
single myth is touched, all myths are in
danger. A sincere gaze, however limited
its range, is a fire that may spread and
reduce to ashes all the shoddy disguises

58

that camouflage reality. Children are for-

ever asking why, why not. They are told
to be silent. Brigitte’s eyes, her smile, her
presence, impel one to ask oneself why,
why not. Are they going to hush up the
questions she raised without a word? Will
she, too, agree to talk lying twaddle?
Perhaps the hatred she has aroused will
calm down, but she will no longer represent
anything for anyone. I hope that she
will not resign herself to insignificance
in order to gain popularity. I hope she will
mature, but not change.

60

Brigitte Banlol films

1952 Le Trou normand (not yet shown in I nglnnil)

directed by Jean Bojer, with Bourvil, Nadine
Basil, Jane Marken. (French production)

Manina, la fille sans voiles (English title, The

Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter) directed by
W. Rozier, with Jean Francois Calvet.

Les dents longues (not yet shown in England)

directed by Daniel Gelin with Daniel Gelin and
D. Delorme. (French production)

1953 Le portrait de son pere (not yet shown in England)

directed by Andre Berthomieu, with Jean
Richard, Michele Philippe, Mona Goya,
Duvalles. (French production)
Act of love (French title, Un Acte d' Amour )
directed by Anatole Litvak, with Kirk Douglas
and Dany Robin. (Franco-American pro-
duction)

1954 Tradita (not yet shown in England) directed by

Mario Bonnard, with Lucia Bose and Pierre
Cressoy. (Italian production)

Si Versailles m'etait conte (English title, Ver-

sailles) directed by Sacha Guitry, with Sacha
Guitry and Claudette Colbert. (French pro-
duction)

Le fils de Caroline Cherie (not yet shown in

England) directed by Jean Devaivre, with
Jean Claude Pascal. (French production)

1955 Helen of Troy (French title, Helene de Troie)

directed by Robert Wise, with Rossana Podesta
and Jacques Sernas. (American production)

Futures vedettes (English title, Sweet Sixteen)

directed by Marc Allegret, with Jean Marais.
(Franco-Italian production)

61

Doctor a, Sea (French title,

directed bv Ralph Thomas, with Dirk Hoga

and James Robertson Justice.

^ ,^0^ <Eng» «*. —

Manoeuvres) directed by ( Franco-

is ichcle Morgan and Gerard I hilipe.

Italian production)

with Raymond Pellegrm. (French production)

Cette saeree Gamine (English title Mamzelle

Pigalle) directed by Michel Bo.srond, with Jean
Bretonniere. (French production)

(Italian-French production)

En effeuillant la marguerite <English tide,

Man/lelle Striptease) directed %Marc Alltfc. -
with Daniel Gelin. (French production)
Ft Dieu crea la femme (English title. And God
a-eSZtan) directed by Roger Vadim, with
Curt Jurgens. (French production)

/ a mariee est trap belle (English title. The Brule

(French production)

production)

Interlenghi. (Franco-Italian production)

62

Les bijou tiers clu clair tie lime (English title

Heaven Jell that night) directed by Roger V ...Imii
with Alida Valli and Stephen Hoyd (I taiun
Italian production)

La femme et le pantin (English title. I H oman

like Satan) directed by Julicn Duvivier. wiili
Antonio Vilar. Michel Roux and Dario Moreno
( French-I lalia n prod uct ion )

1959 Babel te s'en va-t-en guerre <1 nglislt ml,

Bahette goes to War) directed by i hriMian
Jacque, with Jacques (harrier. Ilaiinc. M, .
semer and ’» ve.s Vincent (I rem h prodm imni

Voulez vou,\ ihinsei uvi'i iinn ' (I ngb.h ini.

Come (lame nub me) directed by Mi. h. l

Boisrond, with Hlcnr\ Vulal Ibm,, y.M

(French-Kalian production)

La Verm' (I nglisli title. //„ t, u ,h) | ( ,

Henri-Cicorges ( lonzot, with J.anl'aul It, I

mondo. (Franco- A rncricuit production)

1961 La ir m ’ P r ‘vee (English title, I I’l.mie

■VJair. not yet shown in I ngland) directed by

Louis Malle with Marcello Muslroianni. pro
duced by Christine Gou/e-Renal (( ipra
Progefi production)

63