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Love Is My Profession (Raoul J. Levy; Kingsley International) is easily the peep-showiest, cheap-thrillingest of all the Brigitte Bardot pictures--and probably the best. Topnotch Whodunit Writer Georges Simenon furnished the novel (En Cas de Malheur) on which the film is based. Jean Gabin was hired to top the title. Actress Bardot was signed to bring up the rear in the box-office battle. And the slickest of the big French directors, Claude Autant-Lara (Devil in the Flesh, Rouge et Noir), has contrived to combine all these expensive, volatile elements into a smutty story that is technically very well told.

The heroine (Bardot), according to the synopsis, is "a semiprofessional prostitute"; half the time she makes love for money, half the time for fun. One day when business is slow, she and another streetwalker hold up a jewelry store. Her accomplice is caught. Bardot runs off to see a famous lawyer (Gabin). How will she pay his fee? Calmly she raises her skirts above her hips, suggests that he attach her source of income.

Gabin takes the case, wins it at some risk to his professional standing, calls to collect his fee. He calls again. He sets the girl up in a pleasant apartment, then moves her into an elegant establishment in a more fashionable neighborhood. His wife (Edwige Feuillere) discreetly remonstrates; he brushes her off. The twippet cheats on him all the time; he overlooks it. When she announces that she is pregnant, he happily makes preparations to leave home, move in with his petite amie. The end is sudden, violent and squalid.

Too long by 20 minutes or so, LIMP goes limp now and then. But even at their most ponderously pornographic, the love scenes are spiced with French wit and spaced with hilarious little episodes. B.B. is not really up to her role, which demands more than the sort of lolitapalooza she invariably plays, but everybody else is excellent. Franco Interlenghi is fierce and touching as the heroine's No. 2 lover. Actress Feuillere, as the wife, subtly interprets a shrewd Frenchwoman who understands what is happening, but cannot make it hurt any less. And Actor Gabin is stonily superb as the cynical old sugar daddy who knows he will have to pay plenty for his last fling, but doesn't really mind. He has the money.

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