Her Bridal Night (1956)

Sadly Over-hyped

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Excellent but underrated film

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

"Et Dieu créa la femme" was not that much a permanent chef d'oeuvre of the French cinema,by a long shot.If it were not for BB,that Vadim farce would be forgotten today.As far as I'm concerned ,I have a tendency to favor "la mariée est trop belle",an unpretentious light little comedy .You have got to bear in mind that the script writers (husband and wife Agostini and Joyeux) worked with Claude Autant-Lara ,notably for his masterpiece "Douce" and they should have learned something in all those years ,all the same.Their screenplay is charming,not unlike Stanley Donen's "Funny face" (that movie is much superior though) released the same year.BB is natural,her voice is just a joy to hear -do not see a version dubbed in English,do prefer subtitles-,and she already displays her love for animals (she cuddles her cat more than men).She 's ideally cast as a clueless -but not dumb,BB was never a bimbo- girl, thrust into the world of fashion,an artificial calculating world.A splendid cast gathers French lover Louis Jourdan -more popular in the US during the fifties than in his native France-,Micheline Presles and singer Marcel Amont .ALL BB had to do was act naturally.

Bardot is as aggressively irresponsible as she is shamelessly female... Vadim knew how to exploit her charms... He made her a living, breathing sexual fantasy, an object of desire, a symbol of sexual liberty, and as he puts it: "The unrealizable dream of all married men." However, filmmaker Pierre Gaspard-Huit did not understand that Bardot's image had been permanently altered, and cast her the same year of "And God Created Woman," in rather dull film, in which Bardot played an adorably naive and provincial girl metamorphosed into a cover girl on the lookout for her Prince Charming…The hottest most provocative new bombshell had been woefully miscast as a blushing, sweet little thing, which was really "too much." Luckily, 1957 began with "Une Parisienne," which saw Michel Boisrond, her friend and ally since the film "Cette Sacrée Gamine" assign her role of a dynamic and fun-loving woman

Sweet and lovely Brigitte Bardot is almost in her own world in this delightful "love" story from the mid-50's. Louis Jourdan is his usual suave Frenchman and Ms. Presle is amusing and driven, but Ms. Bardot (as usual) walks away with the film. Playing a model (by accident) she glides through situations without getting stressed, looking stunning the entire time.A 5 out of 10. Best performance = B. Bardot. Not much of an acting challenge for BB and the others, but lovely musical score and great location shooting and just fun. I'm catching up on Ms. Bardot's film and find her delightful, charming and always a treat to the eye. This was right before her "sex" image burst onto to the screen in AND GOD CREATED WOMAN.

This early Brigitte Bardot movie is not special in any cinematographic way, but the story is not bad and Brigitte is quite enchanting. Many situations cleverly call for her to walk around in her underwear or night dress. This kind of movies gave other countries, especially America and England, the reason to refer to any daring movie from the continent as a 'French Movie'. All together, not a movie mile-stone, but not a bad flick either.