In American major league baseball there is a term "came up for a quick cup of coffee," which means a player made it to the "bigs" but just as quickly went back down to the minor leagues. In French film, things are more literal. Photo above, is Parisian proof of stopping by for a quick cup of coffee.
1960s cine star Brigitte Bardot is not one of the principal actors in the film Masculin Féminin (1966). However, she does make a brief cameo appearance, above, in a typically Godardian, blink-and-you-miss-it fashion.
The moment occurs when Paul (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and Robert (Michel Debord) are in a café: a woman is glimpsed, and the dialogue makes a passing, ironic reference to Bardot’s star persona.
Godard, who had previously directed Bardot in Le Mépris (1963), uses her presence here less as a character and more as an iconic echo of 1960s celebrity culture — part of the film’s ongoing contrast between pop-culture superficiality and political seriousness. Art aside BB is there to sell tickets. End of mystery.
So:
• Bardot does appear very briefly, essentially as herself. Her fleeting presence functions like a visual quotation — a reminder that even in Godard’s “documentary of youth,” the mythology of fame still hovers over modern life.
• She is not a major part of the narrative, which focuses on Léaud’s Paul and Chantal Goya’s Madeleine, pictured below.
• For you trivia junkies the cafe scene was filmed inside Cafe Zoo, which is now called Monument Cafe Zoo de Paris (entrance via Avenue Daumesnil, 75012).
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