AND GOD CREATED WOMAN Movie Review

And Woman…Was Created
Et Dieu Crea la Femme

If it's possible for a movie to change the history of the medium as well as to more generally alter popular culture—all without being a particularly good picture—then And God Created Woman will serve nicely as an example of how it can be done. This overheated, widescreen, brightly colored roundelay of sexual longing, lusting, and coupling was neatly packaged by 28-year-old writer-director Roger Vadim into a modern moralistic fable that managed to tsk-tsk what it presented on the screen while making sure that it was all presented as explicitly as possible. Though both Brigitte Bardot and the village of Saint Tropez existed prior to And God Created Woman, the picture's astonishing worldwide success—most notably in America—put both of these incomparable sights on the radar screens of the rich and famous. Bardot's lovemaking scenes were filmed in multiple versions for the anticipated objections—and desires—of various worldwide markets. American “adult” magazines ran still photos of the notorious European “uncut” version, meaning you could get a glimpse of BB's breasts at your local barber shop, but just the knowledge of what we were NOT seeing in the U.S. was enough to pack audiences in to see the picture anyway, and provided the added titillation of imagining that the French were seeing explicit scenes well beyond anything Vadim and his wife Bardot had actually put on film. Curt Jurgens, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Christian Marquand are the men whom Bardot dazzles in this pioneering triumph of packaging and marketing—a picture that would forever put a slightly perverse, leering, sexual spin on that tired and uniquely condescending term, the “art” film. Bardot's future, of course, was assured. As for the mania for Saint-Tropez that the film ignited, BB herself gave this quote to the International Herald Tribune when she finally left her home there in 1989: “I am leaving the town to the invaders: increasingly numerous, mediocre, dirty, badly behaved, shameless tourists.” C'mon, BB. Remember who brought them there.

NEXT STOP … Contempt, Breathless, La Dolce Vita

1957 (PG) 93m/C FR Brigitte Bardot, Curt Jurgens, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Christian Marquand; D: Roger Vadim; W: Roger Vadim, Raoul Levy; C: Armand Thirard; M: Paul Misraki. VHS NO