Sex à la Français

Abstract

It is instructive to examine the fashion in which French cinema, by virtue of its cachet of perceived quality, broadened the limits of what was acceptable in cinema; Gallic sangfroid pointed up cultural differences between that country’s films and the more cautious British and American varieties. Unsurprisingly, the popular conception, whether true or not, that France was the land of the untrammelled libido, with copious sexual activity — a reputation rivalled only by that of another liberated European country, Sweden — did absolutely no harm to the healthy box office prospects of the French films that were shown (sometimes maladroitly dubbed) in the UK and the US. What’s more, French cinema had produced the most important female sex symbol of the modern era; the actress Brigitte Bardot swiftly supplanted Marilyn Monroe as the cinema’s defining image of female sexuality. And cineastes were also aware that French directors were more ready than most to engage with sexually charged subjects.