Brigitte Bardot Remembered: In ‘And God Created Woman’ and ‘Contempt,’ She Projected a Bold New Image of Feminine Identity and Erotic Power

It has always been easy to trivialize Brigitte Bardot. In 1957, starring in the movie that made her a global sensation, “And God Created Woman,” what she did was not widely regarded as accomplished screen acting — or, in a certain way, as acting at all. The movie treated her as a ripe object of erotic fixation, and that’s just what she was called upon to play. She is introduced with shots of her bare feet arched just so, her body lying naked, face down on the ground. “Sex kitten.” “Baby doll.” “Teenage temptress.” At the time, she was branded all those things. Was the movie a sober French drama or soft-core porn? It was marketed as something in between.

Yet there was more at stake. And part of it is that Bardot, who died Sunday at 91, made no less a figure than Marilyn Monroe seem a sex symbol from an entirely different era.