Does any love exist beyond lust and the heat of the moment? Having faith that it does, a virtuous young Brigitte Bardot hits the road in Spain on a donkey in 1958's The Night Heaven Fell. Directed by Bardot's husband at the time, Roger Vadim, it's like most of Vadim's films in being a melodrama not nearly as profound as it thinks it is. But it's entertainingly tawdry and Bardot is fantastic as always.
She plays Ursula, a young women who's decided not to be nun so moves from her convent to live with her wealthy aunt and uncle in rural Spain. As she passes through the little town near her uncle's estate, she sees a woman crying over the corpse of a beautiful daughter. That daughter's brother is a handsome young man called Lambert (Stephen Boyd) and he vows revenge against the man who drove his sister to suicide. He dramatically hitches a ride on Ursula's car.
That man is none other than Ursula's uncle who turns out to be a pretty simplistic villain. Every time you see him, he's either trying to kill or rape someone. He sets his sights on Ursula for the latter but she manages to escape his clutches by climbing a tree.
Tragic and torrid circumstances unfold and most of the movie consists of Ursula and Lambert on the lam. All of it is really window dressing for Bardot, though, plot business to make excuses to show her in torn clothes or using the servant's shower. It culminates in a climax in which she gets more naked than usual for one of her films from the period--maybe it was the natural progression from famously showing her butt in . . . And God Created Woman, also directed by Vadim, a few years earlier. The Night Heaven Fell is really no worse than that more famous film. It's a nice piece of pulp and Bardot is a magnificent vision.
The Night Heaven Fell is available on The Criterion Channel.
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