Brigitte Bardot

[setsuled]

Brigitte Bardot has died at the age of 91. I guess I'll be thinking about her all day. How do I convey what she meant to the cultural landscape? Better writers than I have attempted it. But that should tell you something right there. Marilyn Monroe may have been more famous but the attraction Bardot held as a muse for intellectuals surpassed Monroe's, certainly in the mid-20th century.

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What was it about her? I think a sense of self-possession. She was both cat and kitten. Even in her early roles, the usual French comedy about older men arranging things for the guileless, sexy girl weren't the same with her. There was always a sense that she was in on it that made her seem light years beyond even the directors she worked with in terms of who was shaping the concepts and message. Certainly she outpaced Roger Vadim. Jean-Luc Godard, meanwhile, in his humility as a filmmaker, standing at odds with the image of the tyrannical auteur the modern academics have conjured, filmed Bardot to be Bardot, as Jacques Rozier explains in a short documentary about Contempt, the film Bardot made with Godard.

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I have already written about her extensively. As I wrote in my review for 1957's Une Parisienne, "she was so self-possessed. She could play innocent (better when she was younger) but she never had that deer-in-the-headlights look or the confused panic affected by most leading ladies in the situations Bardot was typically placed in."



At a time when people were wondering just what true liberation for women meant, Bardot was living it, showing how she could indulge in the sexual fantasies she inhabited as well as any man could.

But all these are just words. As David Lynch often complained, the message is the image, no explanation can take its place. Do yourself a favour and watch a Brigitte Bardot movie. You might be surprised by how she challenges the Puritanism of even to-day.



X Sonnet 1972

At clubs, the normal eyes awaited cake.
But cake awoke and something strange was changed.
Another sense ignites what pictures take.
The myst'ry now in flesh's range arranged.
With nature now a man was slow to catch.
Her easy rear beneath a baited pate.
Her girlish brow reduced the prudish wretch.
Recursed arousal traps its fated mate.
The intimate explored a silver screen.
As God created B would shame the blame.
Her eyes reflected you and something seen.
It seems your lust would never tame the dame.
As none can match in just her little toe.
The canny carnal grace of Miss Bardot.

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