Romance

Utilising a posterised film still of a fresh-faced seventeen-year-old Brigitte Bardot frolicking on a rocky Corsican shore, this scarce US One Sheet for the 1958 American release of The Girl in the Bikini, flaunted the stunning young starlet in her dazzling white two-piece. One of Bardot's first film roles, the 1952 French adventure-romance (released in France as Manina, la fille sans voiles) is notable for featuring one of the first appearances of the bikini on film, at a time when the bikini was still widely considered immodest. When released six years later in the US to capitalise on Bardot's rise to international stardom as a sex symbol following her breakout role in 1956's And God Created Woman, the distributors clearly chose to lean into the controversy over the younger Bardot's scanty swimwear, renaming the film The Girl in the Bikini to attract US audiences with the quippy tagline "Bardot as a lighthouse keeper's daughter... who believes in dressing light!" Despite the US Motion Picture Production Code prohibiting exposure of the midriff on film, the picture was able to skirt the regulations as a foreign film.

Condition

Very Good (B)

Conservation backed on linen. Prior to backing the poster was tri-folded only, with a handful of small splits to upper and lower folds. Backing has smoothed and diminished the folds. Spots of sensitive restoration to small paper losses in white ground at the tips of the right corners and to fold edges along the right edge. Some light surface scratches which are not particularly noticeable or distracting, including to the 'B' in 'Bardot' and the 'I' in 'Bikini.' Apparent 'scratches' to the left of Bardot's knees are actually within the print design and not imperfections on the poster. Colours excellent.