Mondays can be dreadful things especially if you're working while everybody else is on holiday, but a good way to face your boring routine is escaping to a faraway land, maybe by watching a film that makes you dream a bit.
Manina, La Fille Sans Voile (Manina, The Woman Without A Veil) - also known as Manina, The Lighhouse Keeper's Daughter or The Girl in the Bikini (1952) - is a good option.
Directed by Willy Rozier, the film stars Jean-François Calvé as Gérard Morère, Howard Vernon as Éric and Brigitte Bardot as Manina.
The story follows the vicissitudes of 25-year-old Parisian student Gérard who hears a lecture about a treasure lost at sea by Troilus after the Peloponnesian War.
He talks to his lecturer and realises that five years earlier he had vacationed near the island of Lavezzi, in Corsica, where he had found an amphora that was probably part of the lost treasure. On Lavezzi he had also met a sweet and kind girl, Manina, the young daughter of the lighthouse keeper.
Dreaming of finding more vases possibly full of gold coins, Gérard embarks in a new adventure with the help of friends and an innkeeper who agree to finance his journey.
In Tangiers the young man hires the boat of cigarette smuggler Éric and they head towards Corsica. Once they arrive in the Lavezzi area that separates Corsica from Sardinia, Gérard gets reacquainted with Manina, who's turned 18, and the two fall in love.
In the meantime, after several and unfruitful diving sessions, Gérard manages to locate the lost treasure, but a twist in the tale reveals to him that, quite often in life, real treasures are not made of gold.
As a whole the film is a light and sweet romance (with a drama at the very end...) and with some comedy touches like the bar fight scene with comical cops restoring the peace and quiet by knocking everybody out.
The best parts are the shots of the Mediterranean coast, the landscapes of Lavezzi with its lighthouse and the underwater and diving sequences that still look fascinating and convincing.
The Archipelago of Lavezzi includes a series of small granite islands and reefs in the Strait of Bonifacio and the two main islands are Cavallo, the only inhabited island in the archipelago, and Lavezzi, where there are also two memorial cemeteries, here the victims of the 1855 shipwreck of the French frigate Sémillante are buried. The cemetery can actually be seen in a few sequences of the film and represents a symbolical hint at the tragic end of the story.
Fashion-wise the film may not be too great as there aren't many costume changes, but Brigitte Bardot wears two bikinis, at times matched with a wide low waist skirt decorated with an old patterned traditional Provençal print paired with a plain shirt tied under her breasts. The ensemble, that leaves her midriff bare and allows her to undress quickly to dive in the sea, contrasts with the dark and more traditional attire of her mother who is seen only in the domestic environment and who wears a scarf even inside the house.
Bardot's bikinis were enough to cause a few scandals: the film was shot in 1952 and released in 1953 in France when the bikini was still considered as immodest, but the film was released in the USA in 1958 (it was possible to screen it in the States because it was a foreign film, otherwise the Hays Code prohibition of exposure of the midriff would have forbidden it...) and in the UK in 1959.
Bardot was 17 when she starred in the film and, while her part wasn't too intense (this was her first major role) and she played Manina in an innocently instinctive way, her father ended up sueing the film company for not respecting the contract he had signed that stated the company wouldn't have released indecent images of his daughter (he lost the case).
Manina could be considered as a prelude to Bardot's iconic career, but there's also a bonus if you're watching it more for its set and settings than for its story and characters – the vaguely lounge soundtrack with a score written by Jean Yatove, enough to make you believe you're on a rock in Lavezzi, sunbathing with the lighthouse safely watching your back. Should be just enough to make your Monday slightly more bearable.
Comments