Brigitte Bardot in The Doctor is Sick (Rank Film, 1955), Plucking the Daisy

Description

Brigitte Bardot in The Doctor is Sick (Rank Film, 1955), Plucking the Daisy (En effeuillant la marguerite) (Films EGE, 1956), And God Created Woman (Et Dieu... créa la femme) (Cocinor, 1956), La Parisienne (Une parisienne) (Les Films Ariane, 1957), Amours célèbres (Cosmos Film, 1961) 7.5" x 9.5" Master Key Set, 9.5" x 12" and 8" x 10" Studio Release Photographs (71), 8" x 10" and 4" x 5" Color Transparencies (21). Vintage gelatin silver glossy borderless linen-backed 7.5" x 9.5" (13) and 7.25 x 9.5" (3) master key set album photographs, 8" x 10" (1) and 4" x 5" (15) color transparencies of Brigitte Bardot (English-speaking debut) and Dirk Bogarde in The Doctor is Sick by Robert Penn, glossy 9.5" x 12" studio release photographs on resin-coated paper, printed later, of Bardot and Daniel Gélin in Plucking the Daisy (En effeuillant la marguerite) (11), with Curd Jurgens and Jean-Louis Trintignant in And God Created Woman (Et Dieu... créa la femme) (15), in La Parisienne (Une parisienne) (7), with Alain Delon in Amours célèbres (8), glossy 8" x 10" (6) and 7.5" x 9.5" (5) studio release photographs of Bardot in Babette Goes to War (Columbia, 1959), Two Weeks in September (Rank Film, 1967), Shalako (Anglo-Amalgamated, 1968), of Mijanou Bardot, Bardot double Gertrude Forstner "Lady Cinchilla", and 4" x 5" (2) color transparencies from A Very Private Affair (Vie privée) (MGM, 1962) and Viva Maria (UA, 1965), with paper caption on the verso. Very Fine/Excellent. Comes with a COA from Heritage Auctions.

More Information: Although little remembered today, The Doctor Is Sick marked Bardot's introduction to English-speaking audiences, appearing opposite Bogarde at a time when she was still on the cusp of international stardom. Within a year, she would ignite global attention in Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman (1956), but these photographs capture her in a transitional moment — a young French starlet being promoted by Rank as a fresh European face for British cinema. Penn, one of the most accomplished British still photographers of the era, created definitive portraits for Rank productions of the 1950s–60s. His photographs of Bardot in The Doctor Is Sick stand as rare visual documentation of her earliest steps toward the worldwide recognition that soon made her the defining sex symbol of postwar European cinema.

When US audiences first saw twenty-one-year-old Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Women, in 1955, directed from a scenario by husband Roger Vadim, they were unprepared for the feral voluptuousness and carnal ferocity of her persona, even though this was her 17th film appearance. When she is devouring Christian Marquand during the famous scene at the shoreline, in the din of the cicadas, she represents the libertine, natural and unaffected, possibly immoral, fully sexualized woman, dancing barefoot at the film's close, unquenchable. She pursues her happiness without consequences, wantonly. Her body is a storybook for men, who are made voyeuristic and foolish. These sublime images by Halsman show Bardot in the guise of unaffected joy and came at the moment of her full awakening, born into the public eye as immortal.

As Simone De Beauvoir wrote about the actress: "She cares not a rap for other people's opinion. BB does not try to scandalize. She has no demands to make; she is no more conscious of her rights than she is of her duties. She follows her inclinations... Desire and pleasure seem to her more convincing than precepts and conventions... She does not ask questions, but she brings answers whose frankness may be contagious."


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