Brigitte Bardot as Desire, and Desire as Brigitte Bardot, Or The Game of Imagination.
On some Brigitte Bardot’s English-language-interviews in the film footage of that time, the 50s and the 60s.
By Elena Vassilieva
It’s December 16, 1965, and Brigitte Bardot has just arrived in New York City for the premier of her new film, “Viva Maria!”, directed by Louis Malle. The Air France lounge is filled with photojournalists and reporters to the limit, and, as Hugh Lofting would say in such cases, “there isn’t room there to hide a dog,” shall the actress decide to bring her dog along. The space is noisy and busy, like in a beehive, and the waves of hectic excitement and impatience are crashing the air. At last, the Golden Goddess is here in the flesh, so, she will be breathed and eyed greedily, from head to toe, for her divinity. She will be interrogated unceremoniously for her divineness. “Brigitte, Brigitte, Brigitte,” as if chanting, the reporters are yelling, each trying to be louder than the other, the minute she appears in the room, with no dog in her arms. Light as a feather, blonde as the sun, with a twinkle in her eye and a most delightful smile, she is nervously smoking a cigarette, while trying to get through the crowd to the podium, which is closely guarded by the police.
The Goddess may be devoured with the eyes, but she may not be touched with the hands. As if to take a revenge for this lack of fortune, the reporters are given the long-awaited opportunity to start their merciless ordeal, which is going to scrutinize every move made by the Golden Goddess at any given time of her life. She may appear as the most delicate feminine creature on Earth, yet, from the very first question, quite unexpectedly, she metamorphoses herself into a charmingly disarming Sphynx, playing an excellent game of riddles with the reporters, even when giving the answers to them in her heavily accented English, groomed by her impeccable grammar. The reporters are taken aback at once, as they might have thought themselves quite suitable for the role of the Sphynx in this dialogue, while giving the role of the guesser to Brigitte Bardot, who was supposed to make correct guesses in order to be spared. But, sparing no soul, she reverses the roles from the very beginning, to the reporters’ bewilderment and discontent. Brigitte Bardot, the Golden Goddess, turns out to be the wittiest and trickiest Sphynx one could ever imagine. She makes the reporters laugh at themselves.
“Are you happy?” someone is asking. “Yes, of course, look,” answers she, smiling and pointing with her hand at her luminiferous face. “Do people take you seriously as an actress?” is the next spiky question. “Since Viva Maria! – Yes!” She answers with confidence. “You are thirty, but in some way, you said, you are still fifteen.” “I’m thirty-one,” she corrects the reporter. “What do you mean by that?” asks the reporter. “And you?” says the actress, as if throwing a snowball at the nosey reporter. “What do you mean you are still fifteen?” – Someone else repeats the question. “I don’t know,” she says, “I feel young.” “You said ‘you are never going to see my picture when I’m sixty.’ What are you going to do?” “Before she gets sixty, science will find something,” says her interpreter for her. “Are you soured at marriage altogether?” is the question posed by one female reporter. “No, no, no, not at all. [But] I think it’s better without marriage.” “Why better without marriage?” asks another reporter. “Do you understand?” says the actress. “Why?” the female reporter isn’t satisfied with Bardot’s answer. “Try!” says the actress and smiles. “You have to try.” And all the reporters are bursting into laughter. “What do you want to know?” Brigitte Bardot is saying to the reporter who has a follow-up question. “I told the lady she has to try things without a marriage,” says the actress, with her eyes full of mischief. The interpreter is repeating: “You have to try, you have to try.” One of the reporters is asking: “What do you have what the other girl doesn’t?” Brigitte is conversing with her interpreter in French, and the interpreter is translating her words as “she doesn’t know what she has, and she may be having something less than the other girl.” “What is your opinion about the American people? And particularly people in New York?” asks one very serious reporter. “Well, she doesn’t know the people, yet, and she doesn’t have any preconceived ideas about them.” Translates her interpreter.
Alas, the precious nine minutes of this game-like press-conference are flying away with the speed of light, as it seems. Dissatisfied with Brigitte Bardot’s answers and still wanting more, the reporters are told to leave and to come for another rendezvous with her at the Plaza Hotel tomorrow, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. The nine-minute-and-forty-six-seconds scene was observed by me not that long ago, in the film footage from the Associated Press archives. I ran into other interviews with Brigitte Bardot, while researching, and they are very similar in style as for how candidly and cleverly the actress responds to the interviewer’s questions. The omnipresence of the Golden Goddess presupposes that she is all-seeing and all-knowing, yet, very often, in her interviews, when asked about herself, she would say: “I don’t know,” disclosing the Sphynxian side of her persona.
For instance, in her 1956 interview for Highlight, on the British Television, the interviewer asks her, in a most respectful tone: “You are 22, Ms Bardot, and you are one of the highest-paid actresses in France. What do you think your success is due to?” At which the perplexed Ms Bardot, with touching innocence in her luminous eyes, replies: “I? I don’t know.” The unhappy with her reply interviewer, in a sort of scolding way, dares to make a suggestion: “You don’t think it’s got something to do with the sexy parts you are playing in your films?” “Yes, maybe, yes,” agrees the actress, more out of politeness than certainty that such a statement could be valid. “Do you really enjoy making this kind of film or do you want to be a serious actress?” “Oh, no, I prefer this kind of film. I will be a serious actress when I will be older,” says she wisely. Then, the interviewer asks: “I heard that dogs are the most important thing in your life.” “Dogs? Yes, I think I prefer them.” “I’ve heard you work very hard, you’ve made 15 films in the last three years. And when you get some time off, what would you like to do the most?” “I have to rest, because I’m very lazy,” she answers. “Anything else you prefer?” The reporter asks, not wanting to give up. “Oh, I like listening to records, go and see shows, go for a walk with my dog,” she replies. “You said you like listening to records. What kind of records do you like the most?” “Oh, classical, and rock-and-roll, and jazz, and everything, I like all the records,” she adds enthusiastically. “And now that you make so much money, I think twelve thousand pounds a film or something like that, what are your ambitions?” “To get more!” Brigitte Bardot replies, with pleasure of a child. “Do you ever want to get to Hollywood?” “No, I’m very well in Europe,” says she. “Oh, thank you very much, indeed, Ms Bardot!”
Another notable interview with the French star was conducted by Ed Sullivan on October 1, 1961, inside the Eiffel Tower, in Paris. Brigitte Bardot had just finished shooting her 26th picture, A Very Private Affair (1962), directed by Louis Malle. Ed Sullivan, a legend himself, stands out as an interviewer. He is an American in Paris in the best sense, and there is a good rapport and a friendly bond between the two during the interview. “How do you pronounce your name?” He asks at first. “Brigitte Bardot,” she says with the utmost diligence of the most charming schoolgirl. “When were you born?” is his next question. The actress is thinking for a couple of seconds, then says: “Ah, 28th of September!” At which Ed Sullivan smiles enthusiastically and says that he had ‘always been rooting for her, because they were born on the same day and in the same (!) year.’ Brigitte Bardot raises her eyebrows, protesting: “No, no, I don’t think in the same year!” The audience burst out laughing. After Brigitte Bardot announces that she plans to retire from the film industry in about 10 years, Ed Sullivan also touches on the issue of glamour and being in the limelight all the time. She says that, in fact, “it is a very difficult life, too difficult for me.” His final question is: “When are you coming to America? […] Because Americans, you know, have a very great affection for you.” “I have affection for you, too.” She answers. “Oh, then you have to come over there and express that affection, and we’ll express our affection for you, OK?” “OK.” She says.
There is a paradox in most interviews with Brigitte Bardot. On the one hand, when seen in person, she seems to outdo and to surpass her screen image of the glamorous woman. Clearly, her attractiveness is even more pronounced and more obvious when she is off-screen, due to her personality. Thus, she exceeds all expectations. On the other hand, she doesn’t allow the interviewers to meet their expectations at all. She leaves not much room for any kind of speculation about her persona, making things as clear as possible, baffling her interviewers endlessly. Her sincerity is her main weapon, which should by no means be construed as undressing oneself in public, in the language of modern culture, oversharing. She would rather tell less than more, leaving her interviewers thirsty and hungry for even more answers and clues. She also knows instinctively how to backfire on a reporter because of a tactless question, making the interviewer regret ever asking the question. Obviously, she is a very guarded and private person, and she excels at drawing boundaries between her private and public personae, simultaneously corroborating her status of the cinematographic goddess and wrapping herself with a ribbon of enigma even more this way. But unlike Garbo, for example, she is not a cold enigma, she is always pleasant, polite, funny, and warm. That in turn makes her even more desirable, as nothing excites one’s imagination more than the enigma. This excitement could take all kinds of forms.
It could be erotic, for instance, and this is what happened to Brigitte Bardot before anything else, in those years particularly, because of the ubiquity of her image that relied heavily on her natural allure and a total lack of any pretentiousness and artificialness. By 1965, the French actress was not simply well-known all over the world, she was desired and dreamed of. She became the epitome of desire itself. She impersonated the happiness that is hidden in desire, which could be understood as an unattainable lure that holds the key to enormous personal satisfaction and balance. The wish to make this (al)luring object one’s own is a very strong motive power and it contributes to the dynamic of this happiness a great deal. The British philosopher and idealist, F. H. Bradley, said that “[t]he secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.” And that is quite true, as what he means here is that when one has a quiet, intellectual rather than emotional, admiration for the object, one retains his emotional coolness, self-possession, and distance from the object. There are no dramatic turns if one is able to choose to admire things this way. One doesn’t seek either physical intimacy or spiritual closeness of/with the love object, one is satisfied with the order of things the way they are. This sort of admiration without desire is closer to a purely aesthetical contemplation that somehow manages to restrict the spectator’s emotions. However, Bradley quickly adds, sardonically concluding: “[A]nd that is not happiness.”
Does it mean, then, that happiness goes hand in hand with desire, which can directly be connected to a temporary or permanent unattainability of the alluring love object, depending on the circumstances? In the case of Brigitte Bardot, it is the latter rather than the former, for most, anyway, but she, as a personified desire, lures and even holds captive her admirers, in spite of the physical distance between them. And the way this lure functions might be described as a paradox, where happiness finds one within unhappiness. The desire here plays a crucial role of reaching a happy state of being, even if the end result is not what one wishes for. The happiness is in the process of seeking happiness. There is something quite optimistic in this, obviously doomed, pursuit. It must be noted that I’m talking about more or less stable individuals here. The overly obsessed and possessed ones would behave differently, this sort of happiness would not affect them in the same way it does most people.
Taking into account what I said above, men had lost their sleep the minute Brigitte Bardot appeared on the cultural scene, and women had tried hard, sometimes too hard, to look the way she did, so she became the most-emulated woman on Earth. Yet, surprisingly, it hasn’t made her persona trivial or redundant, or deserted in the world full of her imitations. It must be added that, unlike many other movie stars, she hasn’t been created by Hollywood or by the masses of her admirers; as a cultural phenomenon, she is the product of nature, in a sense of “and God created [the] woman,” speaking with her first husband and director, Roger Vadim. He said that he did only let her blossom, he never made her a star. I wonder whether it is because she herself has never attempted to look or to act as anyone else but herself? Once, in an interview, she was asked whether she had ever tried to be like Marilyn Monroe, and she, utterly surprised by the question, replied that although she admired the American actress a good deal, it had never occurred to her to imitate her, as she believed Monroe was this great that it was virtually impossible to emulate her and, thus, it would be a useless exercise and a terrible waste of time.
My philosopher friend in Cologne, Germany, liked to remind me in the past that love is all about imagination. We had not discussed the notion of desire at the time, but today, I would declare that any desire is all about imagination. And it could be placed above the erotic, which in this case becomes a sort of a metaphysical desire. This would explain why Brigitte Bardot as a screen goddess would provide solace and hope to so many. Perhaps one could meet someone like her in real life, or maybe one could be given the Brigitte-Bardot-like power that would make her as enticing as the actress is. That’s the logic of all the Brigitte Bardot’s admirers. And it’s the game of possibilities and promises that makes desire look like Brigitte Bardot and makes Brigitte Bardot look like desire.
Sources
The film footage from the press-conference with Brigitte Bardot, on December 16, 1965, in New York City, from the Associated Press Archives: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ILd0QKZOWU]. Last retrieved on September 28, 2023.
The fragment of the Brigitte Bardot UK TV interview, 1956: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IE8G94kUdg&list=LL&index=4]. Last retrieved on September 28, 2023.
Brigitte Bardot, the Ed Sullivan Show, the Eiffel Tower, Paris, October 1, 1961: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzk5cru0ej4&list=LL&index=5]. Last retrieved on September 28, 2023.
Vadim, Roger (1986). Bardot, Deneuve, Fonda. Tr. from French by Melinda Camber Porter. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Written in the Sky Control Room, on Cape Cod, in the wee hours of the morning, on September 28, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by Elena Vassilieva. All rights reserved.
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