And Bardot Became BB

14 – 21 March at Ciné Lumière

In the mid-1950s, Brigitte Bardot was a young woman of spectacular beauty. A former fashion model, she was one of many starlets who had appeared in a few unremarkable films. The year 1956 was to change all this. No fewer than 8 films with her were released that year, including comic hits Cette sacrée gamine and La Mariée est trop belle. But it is Et Dieu … créa la femme/And God Created Woman, directed by her then husband Roger Vadim, that caused a revolution and turned her and the Saint-Tropez location into global phenomena.

Bardot became the icon of a new hedonistic and sexually free lifestyle. Suddenly, audiences the world over could not get enough of her. Photographers stalked her, journalists, sociologists and novelists wrote about her; women imitated her hair and clothes. She was France’s first mass-media celebrity: Bardot had become ‘B.B.’

To coincide with the launch of Ginette Vincendeau’s new book Brigitte Bardot (BFI, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), this short retrospective of Bardot’s key films explores Bardot’s image and significance. Together with Et Dieu … créa la femme, there are popular comedies (Michel Boisrond’s Cette sacrée gamine and Marc Allégret’s En Effeuillant la marguerite), ‘quality’ melodramas (En cas de malheur directed by Claude Autant-Lara and La Vérité by Henri-Georges Clouzot), and Bardot’s most famous New Wave film, Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris.

Programme

EtDieu…créalafemme (And God Created Woman)
Thursday 14 March | 8.30pm|dir.RogerVadim|cert.tbc
Introduced by Ginette Vincendeau (Professor of Film Studies, King’s College London), author of Brigitte Bardot (BFI, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)

Encasdemalheur (Love is My Profession)
Friday 15 March | 6.15pm|dir.ClaudeAutant-Lara|cert.tbc

Eneffeuillantlamarguerite (Plucking the Daisy)
Saturday 16 March | 4.00pm|dir.MarcAllégret|cert.tbc

Le Mépris
Sunday 17 March | 2.00pm | dir. Jean-Luc Godard | cert. 15
IntroducedbyDrMarkBetz,readerinFilmStudiesatKing’sCollegeandfollowedbyaCinéSalon

Cettesacréegamine (Naughty Girl)
Tuesday 19 Mach | 6.15pm|dir.MichelBoisrond|cert.tbc

La Vérité (The Truth)
Thursday 21 March | 6.15pm|dir.Henri-GeorgesClouzot|cert.tbc

Venue:
Ciné Lumière at the Institut français
17 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2DT
020 7871 3515 – www.institut-francais.org.uk