RIP: Brigitte Bardot

 Via Althouse, Goodbye to Brigitte Bardot.

"Brigitte Bardot, the pouty, tousle-haired French actress who redefined mid-20th-century movie sex symbolism in films beginning with 'And God Created Woman,' then gave up acting at 39 to devote her life to the welfare of animals, has died. She was 91." The NYT
reports.

President Macron writes: "Her films, her voice, her dazzling glory, her initials, her sorrows, her generous passion for animals, her face that became Marianne, Brigitte Bardot embodied a life of freedom. French existence, universal brilliance. She touched us. We mourn a legend of the century."

Much as I've admired Brigitte Bardot for her great beauty, I have never seen a Brigitte Bardot movie, not even "Contempt."

 

"We must rebel when we're trapped by circumstances, conventions."

Here's her filmography, full of titles I'm sad not to recognize.

"At best, Ms. Bardot was considered eccentric in her later years, prompting observations that this former sex kitten, as she was often called, had turned into a “crazy cat lady,'" 

it says in the NYT obituary.

At best? That's because of this: "In 2004, she was convicted of inciting racial hatred, and fined, for similar comments in 'A Cry in the Silence,' a nonfiction best seller in which she referred to Muslims as 'cruel and barbaric invaders.' By 2008, she had been convicted of the same charge five times."

 

And:

Interviewed by the magazine Paris Match in January 2018, she denounced the #MeToo movement, calling actresses’ claims of sexual harassment “hypocritical, ridiculous, without interest.” A few weeks later, in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch, Kate McKinnon, as Ms. Bardot, shouted, “Free Harvey Weinstein!” Catherine Deneuve, played by Cecily Strong in the sketch, explained, “Brigitte is very old and very wrong.”

She was also said to be a recluse:

“I am not a recluse,” she told The Toronto Star in 1988. “I live like an unsociable person; it is different.” “People,” she added, “get on my nerves.”

Like Althouse, I can't honestly say I've ever seen a Bardot movie, but her name was one worth conjuring with. Her subsequent history was even more remarkable. While I'm not an animal rights advocate, I sympathize a bit, and her setting aside an astonishing career to follow it is outstanding. And she was right about Muslims.