Name	Viva Maria!
Director	Louis Malle
Starring	Brigitte BardotJeanne Moreau
Writer	Louis MalleJean-Claude Carrière
Language	English French
Cinematography	Henri Decaë
Editing	Suzanne BaronKenout Peltier
Producer	Óscar Dancigers
Music	Georges Delerue
Distributor	Les Productions Artistes AssociésUnited Artists
Released	1965
Runtime	119 min.

Viva Maria! is a 1965 comedy-adventure film starring Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau as two women both named Marie (they later become referred to as "Maria") who meet and become revolutionaries in the early twentieth century. It also starred George Hamilton as Florès, a revolutionary leader. Filmed in Eastman Color, it was directed by Louis Malle. The majority of the film was made on location in Mexico. The film was released in both French and an English-dubbed version.

Plot synopsis

It's 1907 in a Central American country. Maria II (Brigitte Bardot), the daughter of an Irish terrorist, meets Maria I (Jeanne Moreau), the singer of a circus. After her father dies, Maria II hides in the circus where she sees Maria I's partner commit suicide after a failed love affair. Both Marias agree to form a theatrical team.

In her debut as a singer Maria II accidentally invents striptease, an action that lets the circus achieve great fame. Shortly afterwards the Marias meet Florès (George Hamilton), a socialist revolutionary. He invites them to join his cause, a revolution against El Dictador (José Ángel Espinoza). But Florès is soon shot. On his deathbed he makes them promise to finish his cause and both agree.

The rest of the film concerns the revolution. After Maria I leads her men into an ambush, and Maria II saves them, the women create a peasant army, organizing the countryside into a quasi-Socialist state. There are numerous sight gags and comic actions.

Preparing to take the capital city, the Marias are captured by Catholic churchmen who fear the disorder of a revolution and want to stop the people from treating the women like saints. After a bungled attempt to tickle torture them (the Inquisition's equipment is too old to work well) the Marias are rescued by their victorious army. Finally they move to France, where the circus is recreated as a successful musical version of the revolution. The women now wear dark wigs to look more "Spanish."

Cast

Brigitte Bardot as Maria I

Jeanne Moreau as Maria II

Paulette Dubost as Mme Diogène

Claudio Brook as The Great Rodolfo

Carlos López Moctezuma as Rodríguez (as Carlos Lopez Moctezuma)

Poldo Bendandi as Werther

Gregor von Rezzori as Diogène (as Gregor Von Rezzori)

Francisco Reiguera as Father Superior

Jonathan Eden as Juanito Diogène

Roberto Pedret as Pablo

José Ángel Espinosa 'Ferrusquilla' as The Dictator of San Miguel (as José Ángel Espinoza)

George Hamilton as Flores

Trivia

Dialog is in English, French, Spanish, and Dutch, depending on the actor. The French version includes extensive English subtitles.

The last minute of the movie, with the women singing a Spanish song on stage, was cut from later American releases. MGM Technical Services archivist John Kirk was able to restore this final scene to the DVD release.

Awards

Both Moreau and Bardot were nominated for Best Foreign Actress at the 1967 BAFTA awards. Moreau won the award.

Reference

External links

Allmovies.com

Category:1965 films Category:French films Category:1960s adventure films Category:Action comedy films Category:Buddy films Category:Adventure comedy films Category:Films directed by Louis Malle Category:French comedy films Category:Western (genre) comedy films

Name	Brigitte Bardot
Caption	Bardot in 1968
Birth name	Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot
Birth date	September 28, 1934
Birth place	Paris, France
Other names	BB
Occupation	Actress, model, singer, animal rights activist
Years active	1952–1973
Spouse
Children	1 son

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot (, ; born 28 September 1934) is a French former fashion model, actress and singer, and animal rights activist.

In her early life, Bardot was an aspiring ballet dancer. She started her acting career in 1952 and, after appearing in 16 films, became world-famous due to her role in her then-husband Roger Vadim's controversial film And God Created Woman. She later starred in Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 cult film, Contempt. She was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress for her role in Louis Malle's 1965 film, Viva Maria!.

She caught the attention of French intellectuals. She was the subject of Simone de Beauvoir's 1959 essay, The Lolita Syndrome, which described Bardot as a "locomotive of women's history" and built upon existentialist themes to declare her the first and most liberated woman of post-war France.

After her retirement, Bardot established herself as an animal rights activist. During the 1990s, she became controversial due to her criticism of immigration, Islamization and Islam in France, and has been fined five times for "inciting racial hatred".

Early life

Brigitte Bardot was born in Paris to Anne-Marie 'Toty' Mucel (1912–1978) and Louis 'Pilou' Bardot (1896–1975). Her father had an engineering degree and worked with his own father in the family business. Toty was sixteen years younger and they married in 1933. She grew up in a middle-class observant Roman Catholic family. Brigitte's mother enrolled Brigitte and her younger sister Marie-Jean (born 5 May 1938) in dance. Marie-Jean eventually gave up dancing lessons to complete her education, whereas Brigitte decided to concentrate on a ballet career.

In 1947, Bardot was accepted to the Conservatoire de Paris, and for three years attended the ballet classes of Russian choreographer Boris Knyazev. (One of her classmates was Leslie Caron; fellow ballerinas nicknamed Bardot: Bichette [Little Doe]).

At the invitation of her an acquaintance of her mother, she modeled in a fashion show in 1949. In the same year, she modeled for a fashion magazine "Jardin des Modes" managed by journalist Hélène Lazareff. Aged 15, she appeared on an 8 March 1950 cover of ELLE and was noticed by a young film director, Roger Vadim, while babysitting. He showed an issue of the magazine to director and screenwriter Marc Allégret who offered Bardot the opportunity to audition for "Les lauriers sont coupés" thereafter. Although Bardot got the role, the shooting of the film was cancelled but it made her consider becoming an actress. Moreover, her acquaintance with Vadim, who attended the audition, influenced her further life and career.

Soon afterwards, Bardot withdrew to the seclusion of Southern France where she had bought the house La Madrague in Saint-Tropez in May 1958. In 1963, she starred in Jean-Luc Godard's critically acclaimed film Contempt. Bardot was featured in many other films along with notable actors such as Alain Delon (Famous Love Affairs, Spirits of the Dead), Jean Gabin (In Case of Adversity), Sean Connery (Shalako), Jean Marais (Royal Affairs in Versailles, School for Love), Lino Ventura (Rum Runners), Annie Girardot (The Novices), Claudia Cardinale (The Legend of Frenchie King), Jeanne Moreau (Viva Maria!), Jane Birkin (Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman).

In 1973, Bardot announced that she was retiring from acting as "a way to get out elegantly".

She participated in various musical shows and recorded many popular songs in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury and Sacha Distel, including "Harley Davidson", "Je Me Donne A Qui Me Plait", "Bubble gum", "Contact", "Je Reviendrais Toujours Vers Toi", "L'Appareil A Sous", "La Madrague", "On Demenage", "Sidonie", "Tu Veux, Ou Tu Veux Pas?", "Le Soleil De Ma Vie" (the cover of Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life") and the notorious "Je t'aime... moi non plus".

Bardot pleaded with Gainsbourg not to release this duet and he complied with her wishes; the following year he re-recorded a version with British-born model and actress Jane Birkin, which became a massive hit all over Europe. The version with Bardot was issued in 1986 and became a popular download hit in 2006 when Universal Records made their back catalogue available to purchase online, with this version of the song ranking as the third most popular download.

Personal life

On 21 December 1952, aged 18, Bardot was married to director Roger Vadim. In order to receive permission from Bardot's parents to marry her, Vadim, originally a Russian Orthodox Christian, was urged to convert to Catholicism, although it is not clear if he ever did so. They divorced five years later, but remained friends and collaborated in later work. Bardot had an affair with her And God Created Woman co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant (married at the time to actress Stephane Audran) before her divorce from Vadim. The two lived together for about two years. Their relationship was complicated by Trintignant's frequent absence due to military service and Bardot's affair with musician Gilbert Bécaud, and they eventually separated.

Family

On 18 June 1959, she married actor Jacques Charrier, by whom she had her only child, a son, Nicolas-Jacques Charrier (born 11 January 1960). After she and Charrier divorced in 1962, Nicolas was raised in the Charrier family and did not maintain close contact with Bardot until his adulthood. She became a vegetarian and raised 3,000,000 francs to fund the foundation by auctioning off jewelry and many personal belongings. She sought to discuss the issue with Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, but her request for a meeting was reportedly denied. On 25 May 2011, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society renamed its fast interceptor vessel, formerly known as MV Gojira, now MV Brigitte Bardot in appreciation of her support.

She once had a neighbor's donkey castrated while looking after it, on the grounds of its "sexual harassment" of her own donkey and mare, for which she was taken to court by the donkey's owner in 1989. In 1999, Bardot wrote a letter to Chinese President Jiang Zemin, published in French magazine VSD, in which she accused the Chinese of "torturing bears and killing the world's last tigers and rhinos to make aphrodisiacs".

She has donated more than $140,000 over two years for a mass sterilization and adoption program for Bucharest's stray dogs, estimated to number 300,000. She is planning to house many of these stray animals in a new animal rescue facility that she is having built on her property.

In August 2010, she addressed a letter to the Danish Queen, Margrethe II of Denmark appealing for the sovereign to halt the killing of dolphins in the Faroe Islands. In the letter, Bardot describes the activity as a "macabre spectacle" that "is a shame for Denmark and the Faroe Islands." She continued: "This is not a hunt but a mass slaughter" and also described it as an "outmoded tradition that has no acceptable justification in today's world".

On 22 April 2011, French culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand officially inscribed bullfighting on a list enumerating the country's cultural heritage, a decision which Bardot is currently publicly contesting. "French culture is a culture of enlightenment and has nothing to do with bloody things like bullfighting," she wrote.

Politics and legal issues

Bardot expressed support for President Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s. Bardot never joined the party and is not a known sympathiser.

In a book she wrote in 1999, called "Le Carré de Pluton" (Pluto's Square), Bardot criticizes the procedure used in the ritual slaughter of sheep during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. Additionally, in a section in the book entitled, Open Letter to My Lost France, Bardot writes: "...my country, France, my homeland, my land is again invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims.". For this comment, a French court fined her 30,000 francs in June 2000. She had previously been fined in 1997 for the original publication of this open letter in Le Figaro and again 1998 for making similar remarks.

In her 2003 book, Un cri dans le silence ("A Scream in the Silence"), she warned of an “Islamicization of France”, and said of Muslim immigration:}} In May 2003, the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples (MRAP) announced they were going to sue Bardot for the comments. The "Ligue des droits de l'homme" (Human Rights League) announced they were considering similar legal proceedings. In her own defence, Bardot wrote in a letter to a French gay magazine, saying, "Apart from my husband—who maybe will cross over one day as well—I am entirely surrounded by homos. For years, they have been my support, my friends, my adopted children, my confidants." Bardot's book was also against "the mixing of genes"; made attacks on modern art, which Bardot equated with "shit"; drew similarities between French politicians and weather vanes; and compared her own beliefs with previous generations who had "given their lives to push out invaders".

On 10 June 2004, Bardot was again convicted by a French court for "inciting racial hatred" and fined €5,000, the fourth such conviction/fine the French courts gave her. Bardot denied the racial hatred charge and apologized in court, saying: "I never knowingly wanted to hurt anybody. It is not in my character."

In 2008, she was convicted of inciting racial/religious hatred in relation to a letter she wrote, a copy of which she sent to Nicolas Sarkozy when he was Interior Minister of France. The letter stated her objections to Muslims in France ritually slaughtering sheep by slitting their throats without anesthetizing them first but also expressed that she was "fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its habits" in reference to Muslims. The trial concluded on 3 June 2008, with a conviction and fine of 15,000 euros, the largest of her fines to date. The prosecutor stated that she was tired of charging Bardot with offences related to racial hatred.

On 13 August 2010, she lashed out at director Kyle Newman regarding his plans on making a biographical film on her life. Her response was, "Wait until I'm dead before you make a movie about my life!". Bardot warned Newman that if the project progresses "sparks will fly".

Influence

, Brazil]] In fashion the Bardot neckline (a wide open neck that exposes both shoulders) is named after her. Bardot popularized this style which is especially used for knitted sweaters or jumpers although it is also used for other tops and dresses.

Bardot is recognized for popularizing bikini swimwear in early films such as Manina (Woman without a Veil, 1952), in her appearances at Cannes and in many photo shoots.

Bardot also brought into fashion the choucroute ("Sauerkraut") hairstyle (a sort of beehive hair style) and gingham clothes after wearing a checkered pink dress, designed by Jacques Esterel, at her wedding to Charrier. She was the subject for an Andy Warhol painting.

In addition to popularizing the bikini swimming suit, Bardot has also been credited with popularizing the city of St. Tropez and the town of Buzios, Brazil, which she visited in 1964 with her boyfriend at the time, Brazilian musician Bob Zagury. A statue by Christina Motta honours Brigitte Bardot in Buzios, Brazil.

Bardot was idolized by young John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They made plans to shoot a film featuring The Beatles and Bardot, similar to A Hard Day's Night, but the plans were never fulfilled. According to the liner notes of his first (self-titled) album, musician Bob Dylan dedicated the first song he ever wrote to Bardot. He also mentioned her by name in "I Shall Be Free", which appeared on his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.

She dabbled in pop music and played the role of a glamour model. In 1965, she appeared as herself in the Hollywood production Dear Brigitte (1965) starring James Stewart, one of the few American films in which she appeared. She refused to travel to Hollywood to film her scene, requiring the needed cast and crew members to travel to film in Paris.

In 1970, the sculptor Alain Gourdon used Bardot as the model for a bust of Marianne, the French national emblem.

In 2007, she was named among Empire magazine's 100 Sexiest Film Stars.

The first-ever official exhibition looking at Bardot's influence and legacy opened in Paris on 29 September 2009 – a day after her 75th birthday.

Filmography

Discography

Bardot released several albums during the 1950s and 1960s

"Sidonie" (1961, Barclay), lyrics by Charles Cros, music by Jean-Max Rivière and Yanis Spanos, guitar by Brigitte - first song, from the film Vie privée

Brigitte Bardot Sings (1963, Philips) - collaborations by Serge Gainsbourg ("L'Appareil à sous", "Je me donne à qui me plaît"), Jean-Max Rivière as writer ("La Madrague") and singer ("Tiens ! C'est toi !"), Claude Bolling, Gérard Bourgeois

B.B. (1964, Philips) with Claude Bolling, Alain Goraguer, Gérard Bourgeois

"Ah ! Les p'tites femmes de Paris", duet with Jeanne Moreau in Viva Maria (1965, Philips) directed by Georges Delerue

Brigitte Bardot Show 67 (1967, Mercury) with Serge Gainsbourg (writes "Harley Davidson", "Comic Strip", "Contact" and "Bonnie and Clyde"), Sacha Distel, Manitas de Plata, Claude Brasseur, David Bailey

"Je t'aime moi non plus", duet with Serge Gainsbourg (1967, published by Philips in 1986)

Brigitte Bardot Show (1968, Mercury), themes by Francis Lai

[Burlington Cameo Brings You] Special Bardot (1968. RCA) with "The Good Life" by Sacha Distel and "Comic Strip (with Gainsbourg) in english

Single Duet with Serge Gainsbourg "Bonnie and Clyde"

"La Fille de paille"/"Je voudrais perdre la mémoire" (1969, Philips), collaboration with Gérard Lenorman

Tu veux ou tu veux pas (1970, Barclay) with the hit "Tu veux ou tu veux pas", french version of the brasilian "Nem Vem Que Nas Tem" directed by François Bernheim, "John and Michael", hymn to the collective love, "Mon léopard et moi", collaboration with Darry Cowl, and "Depuis que tu m'as quitté"

"Nue au soleil"/"C'est une bossa nova" (1970, Barclay)

"Chacun son homme", duet with Annie Girardot in Les Novices (1970, Barclay)

"Boulevard du rhum" and "Plaisir d'amour", duet with Guy Marchand, in Boulevard du rhum (1971, Barclay)

"Vous ma lady", duet with Laurent Vergez, and "Tu es venu mon amour" (1973, Barclay)

"Le Soleil de ma vie", duet with Sacha Distel

"Toutes les bêtes sont à aimer" (1982, Polydor)

References

Literature

Brigitte Tast, Hans-Jürgen Tast (Hrsg.) Brigitte Bardot. Filme 1953–1961. Anfänge des Mythos B.B. (Hildesheim 1982) ISBN 3-88842-109-8.

Singer, Barnett Brigitte Bardot: A Biography (McFarland & Company, 2006) ISBN 0-7864-2515-6, ISBN 978-0-7864-2515-0

External links

Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the welfare and protection of animals

Category:1934 births Category:Animal rights advocates Category:Breast cancer survivors Category:French activists Category:French female models Category:French female singers Category:French film actors Category:French-language singers Category:French vegetarians Category:Légion d'honneur refusals Category:Living people Category:MGM Records artists Category:People from Paris Category:Individuals associated with animal welfare