Naughty Girl

A red-headed 21 y/o Brigitte Bardot is completely beautiful and charming in this easygoing tale. Ms. Bardot is charming and delightful as a klutzy young lady who completely wins you over. This is not one of her better films and she plays a complete innocent in this compared to her sexier roles.

A 5 out of 10. Best performance = B. Bardot. Misha Auer is amusing as a dance choreographer. There's not a lot to recommend except for the lovely and naive Brigitte. All of her films are worth seeing, even the sillier ones such as this. It's hard to believe she made AND GOD CREATED WOMAN the same year as this. Long live BB!

'Cette sacree gamine' is French for 'this holy little girl'; or, to translate it better, 'this marvelous baby'.

You'll understand this points to 21-year old Brigitte Bardot. And, oh yes, in this film young Brigitte steals your heart away. The more so, while 'Cette sacree gamine' has several dancing scenes - you may know that BB was a fully educated ballet dancer.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said about this film's plot. Telling its story takes too much time, even to 1950-s standards. Its built-up, complete with dancing and slapstick, looks somewhat unbalanced. While watching you feel an urge to check your watch, wondering how long you'll have to sit this one out.

When she's on the screen, Brigette commands your attention just by being there, mock-pouting, prancing about in revealing drapery, merely pouting or casting knowing glances at whoever needs to be trapped by her charms.

The plot was the sort of thing that Doris Day films were based around, but here mixed with more farce, more energy, and less coy dialogue; there are farcical situations galore, and common sense does not apply--the viewer is either in the mood for amiable poses from a self-aware sex kitten, or not afraid of a rather convoluted plot that involves gangsters, a butler with a Buster Keaton attitude, a woman professor that claims the straying lead, or totally impromptu musical numbers that owe a good deal of filching from MGM in it's Minnelli years of glorified technicolor.

All of which to summarize: good fun with some hearty laughs and a major bonus in a young star just beginning to realize her considerable impact on viewers, a musical farce with a little romance twisted into a somewhat feeble plot.

Bardot is gorgeous and so is the production, which aspires to a near-Hollywood gloss, but this is mainly tired, formula comedy smelling faintly of imitation Damon Runyon. Bretonniere is no Yves Montand, and BB's big dance number is a failed imitation of Leslie Caron's introduction in "An American in Paris". Fans of "Time Code" (or perhaps "Tucker") may enjoy some clever split-screen effects that appear to have been achieved with trick sets instead of multiple exposures. A potential guilty pleasure for those who crave 50s CinemaScope eye candy.

The male lead ,Jean Bretonnière,was primarily a singer ,mainly known for his appearance in Julien Duvivier's "sous le ciel de Paris"(1950) in which he performed the eponymous song (but today ,Edith Piaf's version has outshadowed his).

The screenplay ,written by (Roger) Vadim is not much ,a trite tale of forged currency.

Today ,the movie is entirely BB's ;this actress was unique ,with her petit je ne sais quoi ,her spontaneity (she never seems to act) ,,her false naiveté ( she was far from being dumb, in her movies as well as in real life).She became France's greatest sex symbol,and for that matter,never dethroned ,even though it would take Vadim's (mediocre movie in itself) " Et Dieu créa La Femme" to create the myth (the same year) .BB blows everybody off the screen in this movie,including earnest actress Françoise Fabian who would become an appreciated thespian in the late sixties .

Even BB 's fondness for pets is here ,represented by a parrot, Jacquot.

This movie can be considered a musical ,for Jean Bretonnière performs songs ,and during his fiancée's stodgy lecture about psychoanalysis , begins to dream of ...BB in a ballet.

It had just begun.The entire French male population (and the others) had not heard the last of BB.