Long unavailable here, the legendary And God Created Woman is considered by many to be the first work of the French New Wave. Vadim set out to make Bardot, whom he had married when she was eighteen, into an international star. He did so with salacious scandale, casting her as free spirit and “sex kitten” Juliette, whose appetite for men is boundless, and fixing his camera on her form (and feet!) as much as possible. (He seemed to think the Scope frame was invented to be occupied by Bardot’s body; “There lies Brigitte,” Time Magazine wrote, “stretched from end to end of the CinemaScope screen, bottoms up and bare as a censor’s eyeball.”) A force of nature in the lush seaside setting of St. Tropez, orphan Juliette has many men in thrall – “her ass is like a song,” one quips – and three in particular: the abusive Antoine who wants to seduce and abandon her, his timid brother Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who wants to marry and be loyal to her, and a magnate who wants to buy her with gifts. Bardot all but bursts the copious Scope frame with her sun-bronzed sexuality; when she does a mad mambo, all the men in the bar watch her dirty, desperate dance with a mixture of anxiety and desire. Whether one enjoys the film as agreeably cheesy, or as a taboo-breaking progenitor of the nouvelle vague – Godard’s admiration for it is reflected in Contempt –