From Bardot to Depardieu, Why Are French Movie Stars Flirting With Fascism?
What’s up with reactionary old French screen legends? Is it something in the wine? Obituaries for sex kitten turned animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot, who died Dec. 28 at age 91, tended to mention her far-right politics in the first paragraph. Indeed, B.B. was an outspoken Islamophobe — her animus evidently stemming from her objection…
What’s up with reactionary old French screen legends? Is it something in the wine?
Obituaries for sex kitten turned animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot, who died Dec. 28 at age 91, tended to mention her far-right politics in the first paragraph. Indeed, B.B. was an outspoken Islamophobe — her animus evidently stemming from her objection to ritual goat-slaughtering practices during Muslim festivals — who was convicted multipletimes by French courts for inciting racial hatred. But she was not as much of an outlier as the postmortems made it seem.
While the French film industry, like Hollywood, is overwhelmingly liberal (think of the walkouts at the César Awards when accused statutory rapist Roman Polanski won best director in 2020), some of the biggest Gallic stars of yesteryear have loudly bucked the trend.
Take Catherine Deneuve, who though no fan of the far right, nevertheless became the most vocal opponent of #MeToo in France. Or tax exile Gérard Depardieu, who was personally handed a Russian passport by Vladimir Putin and was more recently convicted of multiple instances of sexual assault (with Bardot among his few sympathizers). And then there was late film star Alain Delon, a longtime friend of Holocaust-denying far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and a sometime supporter of his National Rally party who had been called the “male Brigitte Bardot.”
Sure, it might be a generational thing. Or maybe their views are increasingly representative of the French public’s: Recent polls have National Rally leader Jordan Bardella the runaway favorite to be the country’s next president.
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This story appeared in the Jan. 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
