Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1956
Naughty Girl (film)
Buy Naughty Girl (film) now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'Naughty Girl' , also released as 'Mam'zelle Pigalle', is a 1956 French CinemaScope musical film starring Brigitte Bardot.
Plot
Handsome cabaret entertainer Jean Clery is engaged to his psychiatrist, Lili. He sings at a nightclub owned by Paul Latour which is being used as a front for a gang of forgers.
Paul has been framed and decides to go to Switzerland to find out who is really behind this. He has a daughter, Brigitte, who is at finishing school and thinks he is a shipbuilder. Paul asks Jean to retrieve Brigitte from school and look after her for a few days so she is not caught up in the police investigation.
Jean collects Brigitte pretending to be her uncle and keeps her at his apartment. While there, Brigitte causes chaos, upsetting Jean's butler, starting a fire, getting arrested for swearing and winding up in prison, and causing troubles with Jean's engagement to Lili.
Eventually Brigitte and Jean fall in love and the real crooks are caught.
Cast
*Brigitte Bardot as Brigitte Latour
*Jean Bretonnire as Jean Clery
*Franoise Fabian as Lili Rocher-Villedieu
*Raymond Bussires as Jrme
*Mischa Auer as Igor (ballet master)
*Michel Serrault as 2nd Inspector
*Jean Poiret as First Inspector
*Jean Lefebvre as Jrme's pal
*Darry Cowl as Man with Suitcase
*Bernard Lancret as Paul Latour
*Marcel Charvey as Louis Dubrey
*Lucien Raimbourg as Older inspector Dupuis
*Robert Rollis as Gendarme
Production
According to Roger Vadim, producer Mr Senaumd had mostly made B movies. The producer had heard of a successful last minute rewrite Vadim did on 'Julietta' and asked Vadim to perform a similar function on this film, which had been sold to Italy, but whose script star Jean Bretonniere did not like. Vadim agreed provided his then-wife Brigitte Bardot was cast as the female lead and if Michel Boisrond, Ren Clair's first assistant director, would direct. Vadim later wrote "for the first time, Brigitte played a character written for her, in modern language; and she had a classically trained director who was making his first film." He called the movie "a French equivalent of a Doris Day movie but with a bolder, more liberated edge."
Reception
Box office
The film was a box-office hit in France, being the 12th most popular movie of the year. It was slightly more popular than 'And God Created Woman' which Vadim directed later that year.[http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&prev=search&rurl=translate.google.com.au&sl=fr&u=http://www.boxofficestory.com/france-1956-c22750159&usg=ALkJrhhiLGcr7S1Wd-3bM_0zuo9qMV9r9A Box office figures in France for 1956] at Box Office StoryCritical
The 'Observer' wrote that the director "has learnt the knack of raising a simple laugh, not yet the art of touching heart and mind." The 'Los Angeles Times' praised the "tight, high speed direction."The 'New York Times' wrote that the film:
Is full of slapstick and clumsy farce, and some oldish and splashy dance numbers. But it never piles up its effects in any one direction. Instead it keeps shifting key, from romance to melodrama to light comedy, back and forth. It presents nothing that can take the place of a serious study of Miss Bardot's form... The direction by Michael Boisrond seems rather fuzzy about whether or not 'Mam'zelle Pigalle' should be a broad take-off on a Hollywood romantic melodrama. At the end, however, it seems this was the intention.[https://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9E03EFD71E30E73BBC4152DFB2668383649EDE Review of film] at 'New York Times'
References
Buy Naughty Girl (film) now from Amazon
<-- Return to movies from 1956