In spite of received ideas ,Brigitte Bardot found her two best parts directed by old wave directors: "en cas de malheur" by Claude Autant-Lara,and "la vérité" by Henri -Georges Clouzot.
In his follow-up to another classic ,"la traversée de Paris " ,Autant-Lara is much more at ease in Simenon's world than in Highsmith's ("Le meurtrier").
Both "en cas de malheur " and " la vérité " show BB au naturel : a young woman ,whose firm independence of men is obvious ,who likes sex but does not make it a big deal.
The traditional love triangle is some kind of rectangle :the traditional old buck whose wife is aging and who goes through his midlife crisis falls for a girl who has already had many lovers and who is still having an affair with a young man,twice younger than the wealthy bourgeois.
Although she appreciates luxury , Yvette is not that much interested in her older lover's dough, social climbing and bourgeois life style are not hers ;the way she treats her maid (Nicole Berger,who was featured in Autant-Lara's earlier "le blé en herbe" ,and who was to die at an early age in a car crash) is revealing:she accomodates her in the spare room , she does not follow the golden name of the game in which a servant must address a master in the third person ,she considers her a friend.Autant-Lara ,long before Chabrol , painted the bourgeoisie vitriol style (see " douce" "le bon dieu sans confession " "occupe -toi d'Amélie " and others).In her naivete (holding a shopkeeper at gunpoint -with a toy revolver),cheeky Yvette explodes the bourgeois order.
A bourgeoisie represented by a -rather shady, all in all- lawyer (Gabin in perhaps his last great role ) .As the movie progresses ,the character is more and more overtaken by events and his young lover's behaviour must elude him ,in spite of his self-confidence ;his wife is like an extinct volcano ; superbly played by Edwige Feuillère in her low-key performance , this lady never loses her dignity ,she's resigned ,it was probably a marriage of convenience ,no children were born from their marital union .Funny that in the earlier "le blé en herbe" ,Feuillère was a very attractive woman, seducing a boy who was half her age .
In the first sequences ,the director integrates the visit of the Queen of England in France in the late fifties ;few directors have a firm grip on reality/topicality like him : the end of WW1 in "le diable au corps ", Algeria War and the conscientious objector status in " tu ne tueras point" , women's rights in "journal d'une femme en blanc" .
BB ,when she was directed by a great director, was more than a sex symbol.
