One can’t be sad at the death of someone who lived to 91. But I love Bardot on film. I love her autobiography, and I love Ginette Vincendeau’s wonderful book on her; so I took a moment to make a little tribute from the scraps I could find.

The video may be accessed below;

or here:

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/1150063126

……and no, I am not celebrating her racism, homophobia and her support of Le Pen, a regrettable development, well documented.

From the early 50s to the early 70s she embodied and represented a model of sexual freedom and personal liberty, France’s Marianne, the face of French modernity, the woman on trial for being a woman that Simone de Beauvoir wrote about. And those extraordinary films. Then she stopped making films and came to represent the antithesis of what she once did, propelled by the same libertarianism but this time into a racist, homophobic and right-wing destination. A sad development and sadder still that she is not the only one to have been afflicted so.

Ginette Vincendeau’s obituary for the BFI may be accessed here:

José Arroyo