Mourners and well-wishers gathered in Saint-Tropez on Wednesday to say goodbye to the late French movie icon Brigitte Bardot.
The star of ‘And God Created Woman’ died aged 91 on December 28 at her home in Saint-Tropez, where she retreated after giving up her film career in the early 1970s.
Her funeral took place at the Notre-Dame de l’Assomption church, with a low-key service set to reflect her lifelong love of animals as well as her far-right political views.
Many eyes were on the guests attending the ceremony in the Riviera resort town, with French far-right leader Marine Le Pen among the VIPs pictured arriving for the service.
Bardot’s funeral comes as her grieving husband revealed she had undergone two operations for cancer before she succumbed to the disease last month.
Bernard d’Ormale, who was married to the movie star for over 30 years, told Paris Match magazine in an interview published ahead of her funeral on Wednesday that his wife ‘had tolerated very well the the two procedures she underwent to treat the cancer that took her’.
He went on to reveal his wife’s final words saying: ‘They were the most moving moment of my life with Brigitte, because she was leaving us.
‘She said ‘pew pew’. I was half asleep, I sat up and saw that she had stopped breathing.’
D’Ormale also revealed on Wednesday that he told the French government ‘to get lost’ when offered a national commemoration.
In an interview with Le Parisien, he said his wife had no time for President Emmanuel Macron’s administration and that she always stuck to her political principles.
‘Tributes weren’t her thing,’ he said. ‘She received the Legion of Honour, but she never went to collect it.’
Many politicians wanted a day of national mourning for the former actress and pop singer, but Mr d’Ormale said: ‘We told them to get lost.’
Neither Macron nor his wife, Brigitte Macron, were in Saint Tropez for Bardot’s funeral.
Instead her old friend Le Pen, presidential candidate for the far-Right National Rally (NR) party was the most senior politician there.
D’Ormale is a former advisor to her late father, the founder of the NR, when it was called the Front National.
Her animal rights foundation had stressed it would be a ‘no frills’ event.
‘The ceremony will reflect who she was, with the people who knew and loved her. There will no doubt be some surprises, but it will be simple, just as Brigitte wanted,’ Bruno Jacquelin, spokesman for the Brigitte Bardot Foundation said.
The funeral was shown on public screens in Saint-Tropez for well-wishers and fans who shrugged off brisk winter temperatures to pay a final tribute.
‘Brigitte Bardot will forever be associated with Saint-Tropez, of which she was the most dazzling ambassador,’ the town hall said last week.
‘Through her presence, personality and aura, she marked the history of our town.
Bardot was a divisive figure who alienated many fans with her anti-immigration and racist political views in later life.
Her death sparked mixed reactions.
Observers agreed that she was a cinema legend who came to embody the sexual revolution of the 1960s through her acting and daring, unconventional persona.
But having been convicted five times for hate speech, particularly about Muslims, left-wing figures have offered only muted tributes – and sometimes none at all.
‘To be moved by the fate of dolphins but remain indifferent to the deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean – what level of cynicism is that?’ commented Greens lawmaker Sandrine Rousseau about Bardot’s views.
It is unclear whether Bardot’s only child, Nicolas-Jacques Charrier, attended the funeral, but his daughter, Thea was photographed with her three young children arriving at the church.
Charrier, 65, was brought up by his father, film director Jacques Charrier, and lives in Oslo.
Bardot wrote in her memoirs that she had wanted an abortion but was prevented from doing so by her then-husband.
She compared pregnancy to carrying a ‘tumour that fed on me’ and called parenthood a ‘misery’, living most of her life estranged from her son, although they drew closer in the final years of her life.
Bardot also has two granddaughters and three great-grandchildren.
Bardot’s sister Mijanou, 87, who had a brief film career, is not expected to make the trip from her home in Los Angeles.
‘My Brigitte, the one I loved more than anything… now knows the greatest of mysteries. She also knows whether our beloved pets are waiting for us on the other side,’ she wrote on Facebook.
‘My God, please let that be the case so she doesn’t feel alone, but is with them.’
In 2018, Brigitte Bardot had said she wished to be buried in the garden of her home along with her pets to avoid a ‘crowd of idiots’ trampling on the tombs of her parents and grandparents who are in the same cemetery where she will be interred.