La Vérité

One of the great pop cultural icons of the 20th century, Brigitte Bardot, died in December. Her image and allure was on a par with Marilyn Monroe and like Monroe her skill and ability as an actor was consistently underestimated because of her glamour and sex appeal. Bardot first burst on to the scene in 1956 in the groundbreaking and controversial  romantic drama  'And God Created Woman' - a box office hit in the USA and Britain which took French cinema out of the arthouse realm and paved the way for the New Wave of French filmmaking.  She became  known as a 'sex kitten' and was soon the highest paid actress in France - making a series of films that would establish her reputation as a symbol of the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
In 1960 she starred in La Vérité - The Truth - a gripping and powerful courtroom drama in which she plays Dominique - a young woman accused of murder when her lover is found dead and she is revived from an apparent suicide attempt. The film was one of the last to be directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot whose previous movies included two of the greatest films of the 1950s - Les Diaboliques and The Wages of Fear. Clouzot's dark narratives are shot through with betrayal and deception and La Vérité is no different - keeping us guessing about the truth of the events in the case on trial. Under Clouzot's direction Bardot delivers one of her finest and most dynamic performances - leaving us to wonder what a career she might have had if she not retired from the screen only a decade or so after this film was released.