The life of Saint-Tropez could be divided into a before and after Brigitte Bardot filmed in this French coastal town
AND God created woman.
Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir also had a home here. Romy Schneider, Catherine Deneuve and José Luis de Vilallonga were other regulars of the place. The ostentatious wealth of some of its visitors has made this enclave a favorite destination for representatives of the jet-set and the curious attracted by its legend.
The view from the terrace of La Ponche, the little hotel in the Saint-Tropez fishing district frequented by movie and literary stars, has changed little.
The mountains on the other side of the gulf, the sailboats and, as the writer Françoise Sagan said, “the only stable element of the town: blue water, smooth water”.
Yes, now you can see more buildings on the coast than in the photographs of the time and some yacht interrupts the calm of the Mare Nostrum.
But La Ponche —this corner of town that Brigitte Bardot made famous when she starred in And God Created Woman in 1956— seems immune to the passage of time.
Terrace of a café in Saint-Tropez in 1956. Roger-Viollet via AFP
"Look, that's where I was born," says Simone Duckstein, pointing to the building that in that year, 1943, was still not a hotel, but a bar run by her parents. Sitting on the terrace, Duckstein talks about the Saint-Tropez of before, of now. She was here from the beginning. He saw all of them go by. To Picasso and Boris Vian, the trumpeter-poet who convinced Simone's parents to open a small jazz boîte that after World War II would become a branch on the Côte d'Azur of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the neighborhood existentialist from Paris. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. To her friends: Sagan, the author of Good morning, sadness, and Bardot or BB, secluded for years in their homes, La Madrague and La Garrigue, near here, but undisputed Empress of Saint-Tropez. And to so many others: Romy Schneider, Catherine Deneuve,José Luis de Vilallonga!… He does not cite so many names out of vanity. They really were the landscape of his life. Few people saw so closely and from a vantage point like this one — the terrace of La Ponche — the dramas and joys, the profound transformations and what never changes in the life of one of the most exclusive summer destinations.
“It is a true town, with its traditions. And at the same time everyone is here ”, sums up Simone Duckstein. "There is something telluric in Saint-Tropez, there is something on the ground," he adds. Matter, magic… The history of Saint-Tropez could be divided, like the Christian era, into one before Brigitte Bardot and one after Brigitte Bardot (a. BB or d. BB). Year zero is the premiere of
And God Created Woman,
the story of a free and modern woman who revolutionizes a coastal town that was torn between maintaining the tradition of fishing or opening up to tourism. One of the main character's suitors wants to build a casino. Another is reluctant to sell him the land. There was no casino in Saint-Tropez - for this you have to go to Sainte-Maxime, on the other side of the gulf, or to Cannes, or to Nice - but the worldwide success of the film, directed by BB's husband Roger Vadim, it removed the foundations of the placid port, until then a haven for artists, intellectuals, Hollywood actors and Parisian bourgeoisie. Like the Bardots, Duckstein recalls, who, after spending the night on the train, used to arrive with their daughters, Brigitte and Mijanou, in the morning and go to La Ponche for breakfast. Nothing was the same again in the d era. BB“The whole world had discovered us, the town no longer belonged to us, it had to be shared,” explains Simone Duckstein. "You couldn't take two steps down the street without someone asking, 'Where does Brigitte Bardot live?" Saint-Tropez had ceased to be a secret jewel and was the place that attracted world spotlights, the town that awakened all kinds of fantasies, the setting for more and more films - the comic series of the Gendarmes, by Louis de Funès, and others—, and the magnet of stars and rich of all fur.the town that awakened all kinds of fantasies, the setting for more and more films —the Gendarmes comic series, by Louis de Funès, and others—, and the magnet of stars and rich men of all kinds.the town that awakened all kinds of fantasies, the setting for more and more films —the Gendarmes comic series, by Louis de Funès, and others—, and the magnet of stars and rich men of all kinds.
The director Roger Vadim and Catherine Deneuve, in 1962 in the French town.Keystone-France / Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
"We had a very bad reputation at the time," says Duckstein, recalling the years after And God Created Woman.
“It was the place of the party and the bling-bling”, he adds, alluding to the onomatopoeia that imitates the noise of the jewels and designates the ostentatious wealth of a part of the public that began to visit Saint-Tropez from the sixties : a mixture of
jet-set
and curious by the name of the municipality.
Now entering Saint-Tropez by road can be an ordeal due to traffic worthy of a big city at rush hour.
And a walk through the port is enough to verify the
bling-bling
hegemony
:
the small boats moored in the gigantic shade of the yachts in front of the famous café Sénéquier, the alleys that are a commercial center of luxury brands in the open air, the protected and isolated mansions, a UN of billionaires. "Today you have to meet the personalities of 20 countries, and this complicates the job," celebrity photographer Pierre Aslan told
Le Monde
a few years ago
. “The time when regulars put down roots all summer is over. Now some arrive with boats worth 250 million euros and the next day they leave ”.
No one wrote so well about old Saint-Tropez as Françoise Sagan, who had a room at La Ponche.
By then he had already moved his barracks to Normandy, but he liked to come to spend a few days out of season on the Côte d'Azur.
She used to sit on the terrace overlooking the sea, the same one where Simone Duckstein now reels off her memories.
"It is no longer laughter that reigns in the night, nor pleasure, nor curiosity," Sagan wrote.
“It is a kind of permanent display - and generally false - of this joy, this pleasure, this curiosity;
an exhibition that hides, in fact, and little by little, a society so bourgeois, so regimented, so gossipy and provincial that it could or could be that of a city whose heroes now only had rights and no duties ”.
Brigitte Bardot, on the streets of St. Tropez.James Andanson / Andanson James
Duckstein, who has written several books about the hotel and the town, sold La Ponche last year.
He has no children and wanted to make sure the establishment would outlive him.
Unlike Sagan, who died in 2004, Bardot never deserted Saint-Tropez, although she has not been seen on the streets in years.
"Do tourists still ask about her?"
We say to Duckstein.
"Less, less."
