International and French media on Monday paid tribute to Brigitte Bardot, with some highlighting her reputation as “the greatest sex symbol of French cinema” and others her role as a “controversial activist”.
Images of the screen legend were splashed across media outlets around the globe following the announcement of her death on Sunday aged 91 .
All highlighted her lasting cinema and style impact, though many also noted prominently her decision to give up her film career to defend animal rights — and her becoming a far-right supporter.
The New York Times saw Bardot as having “redefined mid-20th century movie sex symbolism”, highlighting her “unapologetic carnal appetite” on screen.
It added, however: “At best, Ms Bardot was considered eccentric in her later years, prompting observations that this former sex kitten, as she was often called, had turned into a ‘crazy cat lady’.”
“She was a French cocktail of kittenish charm and continental sensuality,” said Britain’s BBC.
France’s conservative newspaper Le Figaro said “this blonde whirlwind burst onto the screens” in a France still suffering from post-World War II fallout.
“She shook things up, danced the mambo on the tables of Saint-Tropez,” it added, recalling the iconic scene in her breakthrough movie “And God Created Woman”.
Bardot’s libertine attitude in the 1956 film outraged censors at the time.
French Catholic daily La Croix said Bardot was “the only French star to have rivalled Marilyn Monroe in sex appeal”, but added she had a “career without much success” that was cut short with her decision to devote herself to animals.
France’s left-wing Liberation newspaper disagreed, saying Bardot had a “meteoric career”.
– ‘Diva’, ‘controversial’ –
“She was probably the last of that handful of new and free figures in which France liked to recognise itself at the turn of the ’60s,” noted Liberation, which called her the “greatest sex symbol of French cinema”.
But, it added, she then fell from her pedestal later in life — “fuming with hatred”, as she attacked immigrants, Muslims, homosexuals, the disabled and job seekers.
Bardot was convicted five times for comments that incited racial hatred.
Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper called her “a diva rebel” who “chose liberty until the very end”.
Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said it would be better to “forget, even if it may be difficult, the political Bardot of recent years for the duration of this obituary” and “remember THE Bardot” instead.
In Spain, El Pais called Bardot a “controversial activist”.
“In her own way, she hid nothing. Neither the wrinkles, nor her increasingly radical character or her ideological convictions, which she evoked with crude euphemisms,” it said.
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