Roger Vadim who created women

Roger Vadim who created women
There are a lot of geniuses, and there are a lot of great directors. There are a lot of filmmakers who married famous actresses. But Roger Vadim has an absolutely unique place in the world of cinema. He didn’t marry the stars. He met girls who were completely unknown. They even did not have a particularly bright appearance. When he met with Brigitte Bardot, she was only 15, nobody said: “Oh, what a lovely bride.” When he began a relationship with actress Catherine Deneuve, she was 17, nobody believed that he was lucky. Everyone said, “her sister Francoise Dorleac is much better.” But these two women became stars. And then he helped Jane Fonda. “A part of my crafts – to create actresses, and to be able to find them. It flatters me. So, I have good taste and I can create a free woman”.
French screenwriter, director, and producer Roger Vadim, or Vadim Plemiannikov was a son of a Russian noble man Igor Nikolaevich Plemiannikov, who left Russia for France after the revolution of 1917. He became a French citizen and a vice consul of France to Egypt.
Vadim is his Russian name, which he turned into his surname.
Vadim sold his first script when he was eighteen years old. And after some time he met a wonderful girl, who was fifteen years old. It was Brigitte Bardot. She didn’t think that she would become an actress, she always believed that her purpose was to dance.
Vadim began to work as a theater director. He saw the portrait of Brigitte Bardot on the cover of magazine “El”. She was not a model, but the typical French girl, just what the editor of the journal “El” needed.
So, Brigitte Bardot got on the cover of the magazine. At that time Roger Vadim was writing the script for the film, and they needed a heroine of the seventeen-eighteen. He showed to the director the cover of the magazine. The Director wrote to her parents. They didn’t want to hear about movies, but Brigitte managed to insist on participating in the film.
She always believed that her purpose is to dance. Brigitte was excellent, very talented ballerina. Dance was her passion. Brigitte never really loved the profession of actress. She was gorgeous, talented, but she did not want to go for the craft of acting.

When, in response to questions if she loves cinema, reporters heard: “no, it annoys me”. Brigitte told the truth. Of course, she had some excellent points in her movie life, interesting roles. But movie didn’t become her passion.
The script of the film “And God Created Woman” (1956) Roger Vadim wrote not specifically for Brigitte Bardot. When he met Brigitte, he had already written many short stories, scripts. But because he knew her very well, he was able to adapt his script to her way of playing. He had to hide her weaknesses and highlight the dignity. He was very pleased with the work with her, but he did not write the script specifically for her.
The movie was a huge response in France. Critics heavily criticized, it destroyed Brigitte Bardot. They said that she has no future in the movies. It was the first film, very famous overseas, and only then France noticed that movie star was born. In 1956, Roger Vadim directed his first film “and God created woman”, where Brigitte has played free, uninhibited, without sexual brake, a young, beautiful woman.

They say while in New York, a priest, a poor pastor, bought all the tickets for a session that none of his flock had not seen nude Brigitte. After a tape “and God created woman” to Brigitte Bardot came unprecedented glory. She became a legend. Here in the role of God was Roger Vadim, Roger Vadim created sex-symbol of the era. Brigitte Bardot immediately took an important place in the lives of millions of young ladies. They began to emulate her.
Once Brigitte visited her girlfriend in a hospital, and she was in an elevator with a nurse. At the sight of the actress’s face the nurse attacked her with a fork. Screaming that her son was seduced by Brigitte roles in the movies. It was a shock! But traces of the fork still remained on Brigitte’s hand. She was spat in her face, received telephone threats.
Her work in the film industry has been accompanied by some gossip, reporting mud. It filled her with disgust for the profession. No wonder she had six suicide attempts. She took sleeping pills, cut veins, and put her head in the oven, ready to part with the greatest treasure – a life.

The next wife of Roger Vadim was Annette Strojberg. Roger Vadim recalled in his interview “At first, Annette didn’t think about acting career. We had a daughter, Natalie. And then I began to shoot the film “dangerous liaisons,” based on the novel by Choderlos de Laclos. Main roles were played by Jeanne Moreau and Gerard Phillipe. Annette sometimes came to shooting and gradually got infected by the virus.
She played a small role of a woman who is torn between the need to remain faithful to her husband and a passion for another man. This role required a singer with a pure innocent face. I took a chance and gave that role to my wife. She played very well. Then she played again in one of my horror movies. Played the role of a female vampire. Here she was already under the name Annette Vadim. After we broke up, she starred in two or three medium-sized films in Italy. But the career of the actress stopped.

So, Annette left her daughter Natalie to Vadim, who raised her. Then Catherine Deneuve was Natalie’s mother for a while. When Vadim met with Catherine Deneuve, he was thirty-two, and she was seventeen.
She was not an actress. The beautiful actress was her sister, Francoise Dorleak, who just started to gain popularity. And Catherine at the time said that she did not want to star in a movie.

Catherine Deneuve starred in her first film, “Le vice et la vertu” 1963 (Vice and Virtue), with Annie Girardot and Robert Hossein. Roger Vadim gave her a small role there. The plot of this movie was taken from a book by the Marquis de Sade “Justine” and the action was placed in the time of the occupation of France by the Nazis, it was pretty surreal.
Vadim began relationship with Catherine Deneuve in 1961, and they broke up in July 1963, one month after she gave birth to their son Christian.

After he had parted Catherine he met Jane Fonda. Her main problem was that she had not yet become Jane Fonda and still was the daughter of Henry Fonda, one of the great actors. In Hollywood she starred in a pair of lovely film roles. She was called little Brigitte Bardot from Hollywood, she was a daughter of her dad. Normally actresses start in Europe and then come to conquer Hollywood. And Jane opposite: left Hollywood and went to France to gain notoriety.
When he met her, in 1955, he needed to help her find her place in art. He filmed four movies with her. One of them turned out very cute. It was far ahead of its time. It was “Barbarella”. The film included many conditional, fantastical, strange things, which then the American filmmakers adopted. There was a terrific scene where birds tortured her…This was before the film of Hitchcock “the birds”
Jane managed to succeed in Paris. When she left France to go back to the United States, she entered Hollywood as Jane Fonda. Vadim’s movie with her made her a star.
In late 1963, Vadim began relationship with 26-year-old American actress Jane Fonda, they married in 1965 and divorced in 1973. They had daughter Vanessa Vadim (born 1968).

In 1987, Vadim fell in love with 43-year-old actress Marie-Christine Barrault. They married in 1990 and remained together until his death in 2000. Marie-Christine Barrault (the niece of the great French actor, MIME and filmmaker Jean-Louis Barrault), managed to become friends with all Vadim’s ex-wives. Relations between them are great. So, the day Vadim broke his shoulder, turned funny because when ex-wives found out that he broke his shoulder, all together got into the car and an ambulance took him to the hospital.
“All my four children and my wives, children not of me, they all see themselves as brothers and sisters. It’s very nice. I think this is due to two things. I never created the DRAMA in moments of parting with women.”
Vadim died on 11 February 2000, he was 72, buried in the St. Tropez Cemetery, France. He was survived by his wife, French actress Marie-Christine Barrault and his four children (Nathalie, Vanessa, Christian and Vania).
Roger Vadim who created women






















































Based on the interview of Eldar Ryazanov, famous Russian director, with Roger Vadim. Magazine Soviet Cinema.
source of images kinopoisk.ru