BRIGITTE BARDOT ~

 

Ms. Bardot in a scene from “La Vérité,” Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Oscar-nominated 1960 crime drama. She called it the only good film she ever made.Credit...Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images

B R I G I T T E   B A R D O T

1934 ~ 2025

REVOLUTION IN THE AIR ~

CHICAGO   REVIEW   PRESS   2009

I was carrying this book around all Spring
in a book sack when we were off traveling somewhere —
rumpled up cloth copy sitting with me by a river, in the woods,
on a lawn, by a brook, in the passenger seat reading —

some hate the book, think the long-Dylan savant 

is pompous — ah, so what: it's a romp going through

these 300 songs, historically and the astonishing

line of subjects. "Blowin' in the Wind"

was not Dylan's first song — that was saved

for Brigitte Bardot

"Song to Brigit"

(1956)

Dylan was 15 years old.

POSTCARD 39 ~

Photograph: Anonyme

According to the liner notes of his first (self-titled) album, musician Bob Dylan dedicated the first song he ever wrote to Bardot.

EARTH ~

THINK BACK, PILGRIM (X)

Flourishing minds were at work during the filming of Contempt / Le Mepris (1963) — the French-Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard, his cameraman Raoul Coutard, actors Michel Piccoli, Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance, and an angel on my shoulder visitation by German director Fritz Lang, who plays a director in a film about a film about theater about an odyssey. It is probably Godard's most commercially successful film, loosely based on a novel by Alberto Moravia, with black magic ingredients injected by Godard. In this sequence shown we are located around Casa Malaparte — the home creation on the island of Capri by the Italian author Curzio Malaparte. He fired his architect and built this rock nest on rock with the stonemason Adolfo Amitrano. It's situated 32 meters above the sea overlooking the Gulf of Salerno. Its wholeness with nature reminded the author of his youth in Tuscany. Things got done by Malaparte, even during a world war (2) and maybe because of it. If lung cancer hadn't cut him short just shy of age 60, one of his dreams was to bicycle across America.

Curzio Malaparte with Zita

Photo courtesy Casa Malaparte archive