DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• 1. This is the first film we have seen in color. What does the use of color change? How does the film make use of color (visually, thematically, etc.)? Would this have been the same film in black and white? Why?

• 2. Compare this film to Touchez pas au Grisbi. What similarities do you see between the two films? What differences do you see? Are the films more similar or more different? Read together what do they suggest about 1950s France?

• As the title suggests, this film is very much about woman. How are women depicted in the film? How is Juliette depicted in the film? What does the film have to say about women, and particularly about women in 1950s France?

AND GOD CREATED WOMANRoger VadimThemes, Settings, Context, Visual Composition

CONTEXT• Made in 1956 on eve of collapse of 4th Republic• High Production Values, Use of Color and

Cinemascope• Foregrounded Bardot as Sex Kitten (reflecting

changing ideas about women)• (First issue of Playboy is December 1953)• Made against backdrop of French Algerian War

(suggested through the presence of the Mediterranean, the military convoys, etc).

• Setting on the Riviera shows growing tourism, international commerce, cosmopolitanism disrupting rural life

SETTING

SIMILARITIES WITH T0UCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI

• Foreign Presence/Foreign Capital

• Changing roles of women• Inter-generational

relations• Gender relations/ Gender

roles• Contrast between interior

and exterior spaces• Modernity in conflict with

tradition

DIFFERENCES WITH TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI

• Provence (vs. Paris)• Day vs. Night• Focus on women more

than men (Juliette is center of film)

• Use of color• Social class differences

forgrounded more clearly• Different view of

globalization and changing female roles

MEN VS. WOMEN

LOVE, SEX, FREEDOM

ENCROACHING GLOBALIZATION

DISAPPEARANCE OF TRADITIONAL

FRANCE

THEMES• Men vs. Women (changing gender

roles)• “Modernization”• Globalization• The role of money in society /

interpersonal relationships / prostitution

• Impossibility of Love/Enduring Love

• Women’s sexual identity• Woman as object of male desire• Veiled references to immigration

and Algerian War• The dramatic pace of change in

France