Viva Maria [DVD] [1965]

Along with The Thief of Paris, Viva Maria! was a career-stalling flop for Louis Malle, here given his largest budget and two of France's biggest female exports, Jeanne Moreau and Brigitte Bardot. It's not entirely hard to see why the film flopped, his tale of two singers/strippers who get caught up in a Mexican revolution playing like a cross between Heller in Pink Tights and a sendup of a spaghetti Western. Certainly you'll probably spend the first half hour wondering what the plot will be when they get round to it, as Bardot's daughter of an eternal revolutionary - any revolution, it seems, will do as long as he gets to blow things or people up - finds herself suddenly orphaned and just as suddenly the replacement for Moreau's partner in her double-act after the lovesick girl kills herself. A lousy performer and a terrible singer, they compensate by accidentally inventing striptease, to the delight of their South of the Border clientele, only to get briefly involved with George Hamilton's revolution against evil landlord and local dictator José Ángel Espinoza.

Although there are some neat sight gags along the way - the skeleton of a horse and rider by the side of a desert road perhaps the best - Malle and co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière save most of their ammunition for the last half hour, which plays like a live action Looney Toons cartoon with a constant stream of neat and increasingly surreal sight gags targeting religion and capital. The determinedly but ineptly misogynist Inquisition's instruments of torture falling to pieces because it's been so long since they were last used and the Father Superior losing his head but not his disdain for perfidious women could almost have come out of a Bunuel film, and there's a striking moment of magic realism when a magician brings a dove back to life after a raucous customer shoots it, but generally Malle's opting for something much more unashamedly populist and spectacular here even while gleefully undermining it. (Malle was bemused by Rainer Werner Fassbinder's belief that the two heroines represented two different approaches to revolution - direct action against the system by any means necessary versus change from within through legal means: Malle thought of it as a simple light-comic adventure film in the mould of L'Homme du Rio with no intellectual pretensions beyond being a reaction against the `monumental bore' the New Wave had become in French cinema).

So, a film that's best enjoyed at face value, then. Aside from the perversity of seeing far right-winger Bardot as a Marxist revolutionary, there's a beautiful Georges Delerue score and some gorgeous Scope cinematography from Henri Decae that ensures that the film always looks and sounds good even if it doesn't really know how to end. Curiously, while the TV prints generally seem to be the dubbed English version that entirely drops the wistful opening song, Generique - both Delerue's haunting music and Malle and Carrière's rueful lyrics - the PAL DVD version only offer the superior French language version with no extras in a good 2.35:1 widescreen transfer.

Viva Maria is a wonderfully sexy, screwball, and at times surreal period comedy starring the two great French sex symblos of the Sixties - Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau. I must admit that when I first saw this film way back then, I was primarily attracted to the obvious charms of La Bardot. But now that I am older and wiser (well, older anyway) I can fully appreciate the subtle sensuality of Jeanne Moreau whose gorgeous eyes alone could seduce any man. Together, these two make a formidable team and seem to genuinely spark off each other.

The plot is suitably silly. In some unnamed South American country, Bardot is an Irish (!) terrorist's daughter who has learned all the tricks of the trade before suddenly becoming orphaned. On the run from the authorities, she takes refuge with a motley band of travelling performers whose shows seem to mix circus and music hall. Moreau is a star attraction although she has just lost the partner in her double act. Naturally, the two girls - both named Maria - end up on stage together where problems with the costumes lead to some delightful striptease sequences. The girls are a big hit - no surprise!

The troupe's travels take them to a country in the midst of revolution. Moreau falls for the rebel leader - George Hamilton, of all people, trying hard to look moody and magnificent. When he is killed (sad for Maria, relief for the audience) the two Marias take over leadership of the rebels, inspired by Moreau's zeal and Bardot's technical knowledge of explosives.

The film rattles along at a brisk pace, littered along the way with saucy humour and outrageous sight gags. There is a marvellous supporting cast to jolly things along, chief among them the droll Claudio Brook as the head of the troupe - a crack shot obsessed with developing a gun to shoot around corners. And, as is director Louis Malle's habit, there are also some bitingly funny digs at the Catholic Church. This is not a film to be taken seriously, as its many surreal touches prove. For example, the still standing skeleton of a horse and rider. Or the big black border guards who drink tea and speak English with impeccable Oxbridge accents. It says a lot for the ensemble playing that the film is still fun when Bardot and Moreau are not on screen.

But, of course, it's fantastic when they are - Bardot the playful kitten who enjoys sex and explosives equally, and Moreau the slightly more mature cat: sleek, sensuous and seductive. I hate to tell you about the dreams I had after seeing her love scene with Hamilton - in a prison with him chained helplessly against a wall. Maybe not a great film but certainly superlative entertainment.

I have long sort this movie and now at last I have a copy. This is great entertainment and has been well worth waiting for. Funny and sad (at times). A an unusual film for Brigitte Bardot, but it works delightfully.