More a vestige of 1950s film scandal than a significant work based on its content, …And God Created Woman was a centre of scandal in the U.S. during the late ‘50s that was comparable to the furore caused by Last Tango in Paris some 15 years later. The cause of the controversy was the film’s open portrayal of female sexuality, or at least sensuality, and the centre of the controversy was Brigitte Bardot, an emerging 22-year-old French actress.
We know from the film’s opening scene that Roger Vadim intends to tease and titillate, as a side shot of Juliette’s (Bardot) naked rear end – as she suns herself amidst hanging laundry – is impossible to ignore. She’s a saucy young woman and this is a saucy film. And while there’s nary another moment of full-fledged nudity, we are continually reminded that Juliette is comfortable with her body and her sexuality, just as she is uncomfortable with her lack of self-worth. She’s 18, an orphan, and known in St. Tropez as a trollop. She flirts with a manipulative land baron, Eric Carradine ( Curd Jurgens) and pursues the nasty Antoine Tardieu (Christian Marquand) before settling for Antoine’s sweet brother Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant – in a marriage forced by her looming forced return to an orphanage as a result of her scandalous behaviour.
Juliette struts and pouts, struggling to remain loyal to Michel despite her urges to let loose and return to her old ways. Juliette must decide whether or not she deserves the respect Michel shows her, in contrast to the treatment she gets from others.
It would be nice to explain the film’s portrayal of sexual double standards as a vestige 1950s social attitudes – neither Carradine nor Antoine are vilified for their lecherous behaviour, but Juliette is labelled a tramp and virtually run out of town – but the reality is that things haven’t changed so much over the succeeding decades. While the 1988 remake of this film casts its female lead in a more assertive light, Rebecca DeMornay’s character is as much a social outcast as Juliette, and the scummy male characters around her have as much social acceptance as Carradine and Antoine. While the second-rate remake bears little resemblance to Bardot’s distinctive turn in the original, the two films at least share the view that a beautiful woman who is considered worthless will only survive if her physical charms somehow win her a decent guy.
Beautiful as its sights may be, …And God Created Woman is no art film. Its purpose is to shock and titillate and it achieves that goal, thanks to Bardot’s looks and brazen style. Bardot personifies the emerging sexuality of young women at the end of the ‘50s, and while it would be a stretch to attribute the increased freedoms that followed to her influence, Bardot’s performance here does at least herald the beginning of a new age.Women may not be respected like men, but they could now at least bare their bottoms and get away with it.
