Farewell BB, the legend is gone

It was 1973 when the great myth of French cinema and social life, Brigitte Bardot, decided to bow out of the limelight and leave the stage almost silently and, above all, without asking permission or justifying herself. For someone like me, who had just settled in the French capital, it felt strange: a potential goldmine of news was leaving the scene.

However, this did not diminish my interest, or that of the French, in BB, who from then on devoted herself to the fight for animal welfare. As she would acknowledge years later, ‘I gave my youth to men and my maturity to animals’. In both cases, her dedication had a universal impact. With the exception of the first of her four husbands, Roger Vadim, who catapulted her definitively into the category of universal myth, Jacques Charrier, Gunter Sachs and Bernard d'Ormale were more her husbands than she was their wife.

Unlike other great stars of the French firmament, Brigitte Bardot was not rescued from hunger or pulled out of the gutter, as they said at the time, but rather she was born into and belonged to the wealthy Parisian bourgeoisie. She was born in the French capital in 1934 and, as soon as the Nazis had been put to flight by the Allied advance, she was accepted into the National Conservatory of Music and Dance. She was only ten years old and, under the guidance of the world's best dancers and choreographers of the time, she aspired to become a great dancer herself.

Her already spectacular teenage body, but above all her face, described as mischievously angelic, burst onto the scene at the very beginning of 1950, when Elle magazine predicted an undisputed future for her in the already booming French cinema industry, which still had the upper hand over the overwhelming advance of American cinema, destined to be the spearhead of US soft power.

BB appeared as a supporting actress in a dozen films before bursting onto the scene like a cyclone with Et Dieu créa la femme. While her rise to the status of sex symbol was undeniable, the numerous reports and interviews dedicated to her revealed an independent woman, ready to conquer the world on her own merits and achieve her pre-set goals, as well as expressing her own opinions on the most topical issues. It was a revolution, marked by political opinions that clearly expressed her attachment to freedom, equality and justice.

While her name became increasingly established in cinema with each new film, the directors she worked with also owe at least a good part of their fame to her. We are talking about undisputed figures such as Jean-Luc Godard (Contempt and Masculine and Feminine), Louis Malle (A Private Life; Viva Maria), H.G. Clouzot (The Truth) and Christian Jaque (The Oil Companies). The latter was filmed in Spain in 1971, alongside another sex symbol, Claudia Cardinale. She had also previously filmed The Jewellers of the Moonlight in our country, directed by Roger Vadim, and would go on to make another, Rum Boulevard, shot entirely in Almería.

If cinema was her main showcase, singing brought her great personal satisfaction, insofar as it brought out the best qualities of her exquisite musical education. Considered the queen of so-called spoken pop (whispered song), she used low tones to accentuate the sensuality of her voice. Her catalogue of songs includes unforgettable titles such as Bonnie and Clyde, Bubble Gum, Comic Strip, Contact, Harley Davidson and Je táime, moi non plus, recorded with its composer, Serge Gainsbourg. The recording would only emerge twenty years later at BB's express wish, as when she recorded it, the song was so sexually explicit that the artist foresaw a serious problem with her then-husband, Gunter Sachs. Gainsbourg accepted this and decided to re-record the song with his own wife, Jane Birkin, who, without Bardot's low tones, achieved colossal success.

If the annual killing of baby seals in Canada was the trigger that led BB to turn it into the cause whose importance justified her abandonment of her artistic life, the defence of animals in danger of extinction led her to set up the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, which she supported financially and to which she devoted practically the rest of her life.

BB was the model used to sculpt the busts of Marianne, the allegory representing the French Republic in the main official buildings. Brigitte Bardot was very pleased to be chosen for this, as the name means etymologically rebel, but also love, two words that suited her. Even so, of the many distinctions she received, she rejected the Legion of Honour, the most important award given by France.

At the dawn of the 21st century, Bardot began to publicly criticise massive and uncontrolled immigration in France, as well as the expansion of Islam in the country through the proliferation of mosques run by radical imams. The woke movement did not forgive her, accusing her of being a fascist and a racist, allegations that resulted in up to five financial penalties ‘for hate crimes’.