The most controversial of Bardot's films…
Author: Righty-Sock (robertfrangie@hotmail.com) from Mexico
24 July 2005
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
The phenomenal success of the Bardot myth, like that of James Dean which just preceded it, was very much the immediate response of the youth public to a need they felt in themselves and which Bardot was the first young girl to realize on the screen… In Claude Autant-Lara's film, Bardot came off as more than a sexual image, her persona giving life to the character she portrayed... The film contained of the most erotic scenes of her career: Brigitte was called on to raise her skirt in order to convince a skeptical lawyer to represent her case!
In her frank demand for sexual pleasure Bardot is without any feminine guile, and the film contrasts her 'honesty,' for what it is worth, with the sophisticated behavior of the 'woman of the world' played by Edwige Feuillère… Gabin and Feuillère, dubious at first of appearing with her, claimed subsequently to have found her charming and intelligent, but at the same time nervous, full of self-doubt, and uncertain both of her talent and her beauty…