Vadim and Bardot’s Creative Marriage

Romance has served as the foundation for some of film history’s most significant partnerships. Over at the Criterion Channel, we’re celebrating couples who shared a chemistry both on-screen and in real life with Creative Marriages, a series of double bills that launched back in November with a spotlight on Federico Fellini and his longtime muse and wife, Giulietta Masina. Tomorrow, our second installment presents the work of French filmmaker Roger Vadim and actor Brigitte Bardot, who were married between 1952 and 1957, and whose professional collaboration included four films on which he served as writer and director and three that he cowrote. Their breakthrough, Vadim’s boldly erotic debut feature, And God Created Woman (1956), catapulted both to international fame.

In the below clip, Channel programmer Michael Sragow gives viewers an introduction to the pair’s creatively fruitful relationship and the groundbreaking sexuality of their films. Head over to the Channel tomorrow to watch the full program, along with And God Created Woman and Marc Allégret’s Plucking the Daisy, which Bardot stars in and Vadim cowrote. And stay tuned for upcoming episodes with John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands, Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, and Jean Cocteau and Jean Marais.