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byneddiedingo · 2 years

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Marie Glory, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Christian Marquand, and Brigitte Bardot in ... And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956) Cast: Brigitte Bardot, Curd Jürgens, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Christian Marquand, Jane Marken, Jean Tissier, Jacqueline Ventura, Isabelle Cory, Marie Glory, Georges Poujouly. Screenplay: Roger Vadim, Raoul Lévy. Cinematography: Armand Thirard. Production design: Jean André. Film editing: Victoria Mercanton. Music: Paul Misraki. For an exploitation film, which is what Roger Vadim's ... And God Created Woman surely must be called, the director and his co-screenwriter, Raoul Lévy, certainly devote a lot of attention to crafting something of a plot and a smattering of characterization. But what the movie is really about is Brigitte Bardot's body, which upstages everything else, including a determined performance by the young Jean-Louis Trintignant, on the brink of a distinguished career. Trintignant struggles to make sense of the infatuated Michel, but there's not much written into the character beyond his status as the middle of three brothers, caught in a hormonal web. Bardot's Juliette is so obviously meant to mate with the virile oldest brother, Antoine (Christian Marquand), that the film seems to be marking time before the consummation of the obvious. And when that happens, there's little else for the story to do but either erupt in a violent fraternal conflict or trail off into unhappy uncertainty. It does a feint at the former before fizzing out into the latter, substituting an extended scene of Juliette flaunting her stuff for some musicians as the real climax. Bardot had genuine acting talent, as her work in Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt (1963) would reveal, but it was usually hidden beneath the other gifts that nature gave her, and Vadim did his worst to keep it hidden. Cinematographer Armand Thirard seems constrained by the aspect ratio of CinemaScope, frequently grouping his characters on one side of the screen while filling the rest with inessentials, like the staircase on the right side of the scene shown above, although he occasionally pulls off some interesting deep-focus compositions with this approach. Still his work on the film is probably most famous for a screen-wide shot of the nude Bardot that American censors slashed at ruthlessly.

#... And God Created Woman #Roger Vadim #Brigitte Bardot #Jean-Louis Trintignant #Christian Marquand

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