The director and the womaniser.

Roger Vadim was a greater womaniser than film director. The major dates in his career are his weddings’.

December 19, 1952 : he marries Brigitte Bardot. Four years later, he plays God and creates Woman/Bardot : « Et Dieu créa la femme » launches her career to international fame.

Woman bites into sweet apple of success, Woman and God split, God is expelled from Garden of Eden.

June 17, 1958 : Vadim marries Annette Stroyberg. A misstep for both, maybe because their talents were evenly matched. « Et mourir de plaisir » (1960), though Vadim’s best film for many, does not helps their careers or their couple : Annette stars under her husband’s name, but casting one’s wife as a vampire is tactless and calling for trouble.

Roger Vadim shall never marry Catherine Deneuve, but knows her well enough : together, they create a son, Christian. In « Le vice et la vertu » (1962), he offers her her first major role : the film is based on Sade and set in Nazi Germany ; Deneuve is « vertu », maybe this is why she will not marry him.

Vadim knows the marketing power of scandal : the film stirs one, it serves his actress better him ; in 1963, Deneuve stars in « Les parapluies de Cherbourg ». Since, she has not looked back.

August 14, 1965 : another stroke of genius or irresistible Gallic-Ukrainian charm -Vadim was from a line of Ukrainian aristocrats- : he marries Jane Fonda and directs her in two major fiascos and one cult item.

Not one to doubt himself or hiding it with talent, Vadim walks into Max Ophüls’s footsteps : after the dead director’s masterpiece, he films a new adaptation of Schnitzler’s « La ronde » (1964) to embarrassing result ; despite his inflated ego and ankles, Ophüls’s shoes were too big for him.

Unfazed, Vadim moves on and confronts Zola in « La curée » (1966) ; Zola’s loss is not his win, or his wife’s.

Done with classics, Vadim returns to pop culture : set in year 40000, « Barbarella » adapts a comic book by Jean-Claude Forrest, who writes the script and designs the production. Jane Fonda is twice as stunning as any subsequent Lara Croft ; if she was a feminist before meeting Vadim, she may have become a radical during her married life.

Bardot, Deneuve, Fonda : a hat trick made in heaven. Three wasted opportunities for Vadim to pick his Marlene and be a new Sternberg. He probably missed the patience and dedication. If he grew tired of each of his bed companions, how fast building « une oeuvre » would have bored him ; if they did of him, maybe his attention span and personal charm were equally short-lived.

Did he also lack talent ? Rather interest in his films, as compared to his life. The director always displayed a strong taste for superficiality as the only cultured way of being.

Vadim set his three actresses to sea and they sailed on to stardom, while he watched from the shore. Three tiny remakes of « A star is born », but no melodrama : Vadim was never bitter ; a gambler, he liked a roller coaster better than the dull climb of success and the vulgarity of awards.

December 21, 1990 : twenty eight years and two days after he wedded Brigitte Bardot, Roger Vadim settles for less glamour and more stability ; he marries Marie-Christine Barrault, an actress, but never a star, unlikely at 46, despite contemporary technological and medical prowess, to start afresh as a sex goddess.

Three years earlier, Vadim’s film career had rock-bottomed. He had tried and played God again, but, in thirty years, God had lost his magic touch : Woman was Rebecca de Mornay ; « And God created woman », a modern version, not a remake, of the earlier movie, cost God his licence to direct more feature films.