Directed by Roger Vadim
Written by Roger Vadim and Raoul Levy
1956/France
Cocinor/Iena Productions/Union Cinematographique Lyonnaise
First viewing/Hulu
Juliete Hardy: That’s my favorite song!
Antoine Tardieu: It’s the first time I ever heard it.
Juliete Hardy: Me too.
This film made Brigitte Bardot a star and international sex symbol. It exceeded my very low expectations.
Juliete (Bardot) is an eighteen-year-old orphan who has been taken in by a family in San Tropez. She is a “wild child” who does and says exactly what she wants at all times. Her family is threatening to send her back to the orphanage because of her bad attitude, particularly toward work. Juliete has attracted the attention of Eric Carradine (Curd Jurgens), a much-older shipping tycoon. She flirts with him but is in love with Antoine (Christian Marquand), the eldest son of a family that owns a shipping business that Carradine wants to acquire. His plan is to “have” her then drop her flat and marry somebody else. She overhears him talking about this in the uni-sex restroom and drops him first.
Finally, push comes to shove and Juliete’s family calls Social Services on her, she gives lip to the welfare lady, and is now due to be shipped back to the orphanage until she is 21. Marriage or adoption is the only out. Carradine tries to get Antoine to marry her but it’s no go. But Antoine’s younger brother Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant) has been pining for Juliet and is more than willing to take her on despite the vehement opposition of his mother. Juliete decides she likes him and the marriage is successful at first.
The rest of the movie follows Juliete’s adventures with all the men in her life.
This movie is not great or anything but the Riviera and Bardot both look wonderful. I love Trintignant and he is good in one of his very first feature films. Bardot herself is actually not a bad actress and is an expert at the mambo.
Clip (no subtitles necessary!)
Mambo!
I bet she does a mean rumba too!
I saw this just a few nights ago and I really liked it a lot. Bardot was a pretty good actress and, yeah, it was nice to see Trintignant so early in his career. I hadn’t thought about it for a long time, but seeing And God Created Woman … reminded me of the first time I saw Trintignant, at a revival house screening of The Conformist about 1990, back when I had only seen two or three Italian movies. It was quite a revelation about what cinema could be.
The best thing about And God Created Woman … is in the first scene where the old man is pulling himself out of the wheelchair and looking at nude Juliette through that weird little window. Then he sees his wife coming and he slams the window and drops himself into the wheelchair and he almost hangs himself because he got his scarf caught in the window! Merde!
I went into this thinking it would be a sexploitation film and got way more than I expected. Bardot was truly a phenomenon!