Viva Maria!
With Jeanne Moreau, Brigitte Bardot, George Hamilton.
France/Italy, 1965, 35mm, color, 117 min.
French and German with English subtitles.
Perhaps only Malle could have imagined teaming international sex symbol Brigitte Bardot with New Wave icon Jeanne Moreau. Itinerant Irish revolutionary Maria O'Malley (Bardot) escapes into the Central American jungle after her father is killed during an attempted bombing in a British colony. She happens upon a traveling circus, and soon becomes part of an act with another Maria (Moreau). As the circus caravan rumbles through poor, broken-down villages, the two women become increasingly aware of the desperate condition of the people, and of the movement that's forming to liberate them from the vicious exploitation of the landowners. A potent and highly comic mix of travelogue, circus story, politics and a little bit of striptease, Viva Maria! marked the first collaboration between Louis Malle and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, who would become one of his closest collaborators.
