Brigitte Bardot and Roger Vadim, from the painful marriage to the betrayal on the set

Thanks to Vadim’s film, Bardot becomes an icon of French glamour, a forerunner on issues of sexual freedom or the defense of animals. Girls now want to be like her, who embodies these battles of hers, suffering from her, despite her, a new status, that of sex symbol and super star overexposed in the media, so much so that she can be defined the first modern “influencer”.. In a France that is filled with smoky discos, where kids now want to have fun, Bardot launches fashions that become global: gone are the skirts that cover the knees, the shirts buttoned up to the neck, the impeccable hairstyles with perfect highlights. Everywhere the streets are filled with lion manes, plunging necklines, eyes lined with eyeliner, pouty lips, checked shirts tied under the breasts, shorts, ballet flats and gingham checks.

The triangle with Jean-Louis Trintignant and the divorce

Yet it was precisely in that – first, greatest, unrepeatable – moment that the story between Brigitte Bardot (who by now had only a feeling of friendship for her husband) and Roger Vadim was destroyed. The reason? A relentless love triangle born on set: BB fell in love with her colleague Jean-Louis Trintignant, also married to another actress, Stéphane Audran. It was love at first sight, with the two actors leaving their respective spouses to move in together. However, this relationship also quickly comes to an end after a year.

The divorce between Brigitte and Roger became official on December 6, 1957, almost 5 years after that “yes” son of a love that seemed invincible, eternal, uncontainable. For Vadim, who noticed the feeling between his wife and Trintignant on the set of And God…Created Woman, finishing filming was torture, especially for those sequences where the two played (with great enthusiasm…) the love scenes. Vadim and Bardot, even after the divorce, will return to work together in 4 films – Moonshine lovers (1958), At full speed (1961), The warrior’s rest (1962) e A woman like me (1973) – without ever achieving the success of the first. Their love was now a memory, but that betrayal experienced before his eyes remained an open wound for Roger.